Watch Jarvis Cocker Cover the Velvet Underground’s ‘Venus in Furs’
Jarvis Cocker’s band JARV IS… covered the Velvet Underground’s “Venus in Furs” during an exhibition saluting choreographer Michael Clark.
The sextet faithfully recreated the droning tune, which appeared on 1967’s The Velvet Underground & Nico, with Cocker crooning over Serafina Steer’s bowed harp and Emma Smith’s eerie violin. The group also covered the Fall’s “Big New Prinz,” tackled the former Pulp frontman’s own solo cut “Further Complications” and played “House Music All Night Long” from JARV IS…’ debut LP, the July-issued Beyond the Pale.
The video, directed by Andy Hui, was filmed at London’s Barbican Centre. It features three visual settings: Charles Atlas’ film installation A Prune Twin, a Sarah Lucas installation and a recreation of Clark’s 1998 project with the Fall, I Am Curious, Orange.
Cocker enthused about the exhibition, Michael Clark: Cosmic Dancer, in a statement, writing, “Take a look for yourself. Walk around, and slowly it will start to dawn on you, as it did on me: Dance is the language of the human body. And nobody speaks it better than Michael Clark.”
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JARV IS… recently announced a series of U.K. screenings for their concert film Beyond the Pale… Live from the Centre of the Earth.
In a recent IndieLand interview, Cocker agreed with Rob Sheffield’s observation that “House Music All Night Long” has turned into a “timely quarantine theme song.”
“That is quite strange,” he said. “We played a show to launch that single — I think it was March the 2nd, two weeks before the lockdown. We had received the first pressings of the single that night and I was really excited. Then within a couple of weeks, it had taken on a whole different meaning. Emma, our violinist, pointed it out, because one of her friends got the virus and had to self-isolate and said, “Well, that song seemed to be talking completely about my experience.” But given the choice between having a timely song and a global pandemic, I think I’d rather not have the global pandemic.”
