Existentialist angst

Check out This is Hardcore sound clips at
The Planet of Sound.

By Daniel Silk

This is Hardcore is not what the mainstream wants to hear. Neither catchy nor hip, it certainly does not play into conventional marketing strategies for British pop music. In fact, the album seems more concerned with exposing the futility of trivialities like hipness and strategy because, well, we're all going to die anyway.

Hardcore deals with the big picture: the farther you zoom out, the less you have. In the opener, "The Fear," Cocker introduces the album as "the sound of loneliness turned up to 10/ A horror soundtrack from a stagnant water bed/ the sound of someone losing the plot."

Where is all this coming from? Why is it that Jarvis, as he says in "TV Movie," "can't even think of anything clever to say?" Jarvis wanted to be a rock star, so he became one--going to the parties, consuming designer drugs, and now what is he supposed to do?

In the record's context, "hardcore" is a word for making it to the center of the world you've always admired from the outside. "Hardcore" lies between the big break and the long, painful healing: it's the point at which you are no longer defined by your scene--your scene is defined by you.

Hardcore is not the throbbing pop wet dream that 1994's His 'n' Hers was. While past efforts leaned more heavily toward the unabashed glam rock of Bowie and Roxy Music, the new record's sonic seeds are closer to the melancholy of Darklands-era Jesus & Mary Chain and even to--hold your breath--Bruce Springsteen (in, perhaps intentionally, "Glory Days").

In the end, This is Hardcore is an optimistic record. It's the sound of a pop star growing up and rejecting the ego-mania of his generation, and in turn turning down the loneliness. Cocker's self-conscious jabs at the solipsism of popular culture remind us that perfection and irony are over. We can't lose the plot because we write it, and searching for meaning in life is pointless because the meaning is in the search. So let's throw out the old waterbed.

Back to A&E...