Different Class (1995): A decade and a half on, this certainly holds up as possibly the best album of the ‘90s, though I don’t think anyone suspected so at the time (I certainly didn’t). You could say that some of the synth-pop sound is dated, except that mainstream pop music hasn’t exactly altered by more than a fraction since 1995. But it’s the words that make this record: Jarvis Cocker seizes the mantle that Ray Davies gave up many, many decades ago as the finest working British lyricist of his generation. I could write a few paragraphs on Cocker’s insightful observations on sex, raves, and the class system, but instead I’ll just observe that the social protest songs ring out like anthems and the interpersonal relationship songs don’t rely on romantic clichés, and both display an acute eye for detail and an adult sense of emotional complexity. A classic? Yeah. Now I’m off to dance, drink, and screw because there’s nothing else to do. *****
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