Page 94 - Flaunt 171 - Summer of Our Discontent - PS

“jarvis... jarvis... jarvis!! the phone!!” shouts the incrementally more exasperated sounding voice at the end of the line, which I can only assume belongs to the girlfriend of my interviewee. The tone seems somehow entirely fitting for the testing times in which the phone call is made, when people either singularly or in small nuclear groups shelter in their homes from a global pandemic, no doubt driving each other, or themselves, more than a little crazy. I hear a muffled reply, and wait. Listening back to the recording, it seems that during this moment I am mumbling something surreal to myself—some- what emblematic of my own mental health response to the invisible virus that has flung the world into varying paroxysms of strangely calm societal chaos. When Jarvis Branson Cocker does come on the line, it takes us both a couple of minutes to
break off our respective reveries and remember why we are meant to be talking at all, and we both faff about for at least a minute turning off our radios, both of which seem to be tuned to the quintessentially comforting British soma of BBC Radio
4. “Okay, that’s good, I’m relaxed now...” he says in the dulcet Sheffield drawl that has defined a career encompassing sar- donic pop stardom, outsider art documentarian, radio host, and bedtime story reader to a nation that hold him about as dear as they do Heinz Tomato Kethcup.
As it turns out, we are chatting because he is about to release a brand new album entitled Beyond The Pale under the band name Jarv Is. The record is the culmination of an innovative collaborative musical project with some of his musician friends—but more of that shortly—and it’s already
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