Further adventures

Cocker's new album has some of his best songs since 1995's Different Class with Pulp. Photo / Supplied by Rob Jefferson

He's got a reputation as an intelligent chap with a wry and sometimes savage wit, yet Jarvis Cocker is the first to admits he's anything but deep.

"I am profoundly shallow," he sings gleefully on I Never Said I Was Deep, a song from his latest solo album Further Complications.

And in real life, or at least down the phone from his home in Paris, the former frontman for Brit pop veterans Pulp is dead set on backing that clever little lyric up.

"There's a weird thing in our society that people want to appear to be deep," he says in his droll, slightly cheeky Yorkshire lilt. "So they invent problems for themselves, go and become drug addicts, stuff like that, because this message has got round that by suffering you become deep. But there is enough suffering in the world anyway and don't worry, it will come to you. It seems sad that you would artificially induce suffering. You will suffer," he chuckles.

Welcome to the unique, odd, and quite often hilarious world of Jarvis Cocker, who plays the Powerstation in Auckland on December 4.

Over the course of the interview he mentions how he likes groping (be it for words, emotions or girls' bottoms); he randomly brings up his dislike of Phil Collins (for no apparent reason); and how recording Further Complications was quick with "no sitting round eating a pizza while someone tried to make a snare drum sound like a pterodactyl".

With this sort of turn of phrase it's no wonder he came up with posturing pop gems about love, lust and revelry among the working classes in Pulp songs like Common People, Sorted For Es and Wizz and Disco 2000.

He's also brutally honest - and always has been. Analyse Cocker's lyrics and he's not scared to reveal all about himself, his lovers, friends and acquaintances. Even if the tales are a little rambling and twisted at times.

"I will never get to touch you so I wrote this song instead/So let it penetrate your consciousness/Oh oh oh oh yes", he sings on a song that will remain nameless from Further Complications.

Then there's the naughty pill-popping anthem Sorted For Es and Wizz - "We're all sorted out for E's and wizz ... tell me when the spaceship lands." - that created a stink in Britain upon release in 1995.

He's no stranger to controversy, and for many Cocker is best known as the guy who invaded the stage in protest during Michael Jackson's performance at the 1996 Brit Awards. You see Cocker didn't like the way Jackson saw himself as a "Christ-like" figure.

But, he confesses, as he gets older it becomes harder to be open and honest. "Because we all have to get on in society and have friends and function as human beings. And as you get older, it's a downhill slope towards death, so I suppose there is a temptation to pull a light veil over everything because no one wants to confront their immortality 24/7.

"I'm no different. I kind of grope towards some form of truth in what I write about, and I'm not saying it's necessarily profound, but some of the truths I arrive at aren't that comfortable."

Cocker's been at this music gig for years because it took an unusually long time for Pulp to get noticed.

They formed way back in 1978 in Sheffield, when Cocker was in his mid-teens, and made little headway in the 80s with their fractious post punk pop. They broke through with the 1994 album His'n'Hers, and then made the big time with 1995's Different Class which included singles Common People and Disco 2000.

They released another two albums, including the excellent This Is Hardcore, and in 2002 the band went on an indefinite hiatus. Cocker went solo and surprisingly, even for the goofy-looking yet charismatic Cocker, it was a daunting prospect.

"I'd been in Pulp since I was about 14 or 15 so I probably needed to do it really. It wasn't really a big dramatic decision, it was really just practical because I'd just moved to France and it would have been difficult to keep rehearsing. Probably at the back of my mind it'd be good for me to be without, since I'd had it for all of my semi-adult life. Maybe I should see if I can live life without it."

He says he probably used the group as a security blanket.

"And then I cried," he says with a shrill whine. "I cried because I did not have my security blanket and I collapsed. But no, no, I survived."

He's 46 now, has a son who he's just got off to school before this interview, and he's happy living in Paris. Although he says jokingly he'd kill himself if he had to live in France the whole time so he flits back to London occasionally.

And he's happier than ever making music, which he describes as akin to going fishing. "You don't know what you're going to come up with and there's that excitement that you're going to come up with something you've never come across before. Something strange and amazing.

"It's difficult though, because you can't force that type of thing. You have to wait. But you can't be so complacent and just sit there thinking maybe a bite will come now and again, you have to bait your hook, if you get me, and put some effort in."

On Further Complications he's come up with some of his best songs since Different Class and its often heavier and rowdier than ever before.

Homewrecker is like the Batman theme song ("My mum made me a Batman outfit and I used to follow her around the supermarket when she was doing the shopping as Batman."); Pilchard is a primal surf-guitar racket; and Caucasian Blues is, as the name suggests, a white boy blues stomper. "But there is some quieter stuff on there. And I feel as though it's a fairly light-hearted record in a way. And it was a pleasant record to make and I hope it's a pleasant record to listen to."

His dry wit comes through too, with lines like, "I met her at the museum of paleontology, and I make no bones about it", on Leftovers.

It's a sense of humour he says comes from growing up in Yorkshire. "There's a type of humour that comes with it, and it's different from Manchester and Liverpool humour which is much more brash.

"Yorkshire people tend to be more deadpan, but humour is very important in that part of the world because traditionally it's been fairly rough there and you have to develop a sense of humour to deal with it. It's not a showy sense of humour.

"I think the thing that inherently might have stuck with me is, if at all possible turn any situation into a laugh, or some fun, and I guess the underlying thing of that is life isn't always fun, so you may as well enjoy it while you can."

LOWDOWN

Who: Jarvis Cocker, former Pulp front man, now solo artist.

Where & when: Wellington Town Hall, Dec 3; Powerstation, Auckland, Dec 4.

Latest album: Further Complications, out now.

See also As Pulp, His'n'Hers (1994); Different Class (1995); This Is Hardcore (1998). As Jarvis Cocker, Jarvis (2006).