Album Review: Pulp - 'More'
Jarvis Cocker and co. return with the first Pulp album in 24 years, tackling the passing of time with flair and reflection.
In 1995, Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker invited listeners to meet up in the year 2000, looking ahead to the new millennium with a wary anticipation. “Won’t it be strange when we’re all fully grown”, he sang, but he wasn’t exactly youthful himself. At 32 years old, Cocker wasn’t fully grown, but he was significantly further along than fellow Britpop frontman Liam Gallagher, who was just 23 when Oasis released their record-breaking ‘(What’s the Story) Morning Glory?’ album.
Coming out that same year was Pulp’s fifth record ‘Different Class’, arguably the band’s greatest artistic statement, and certainly their most commercially successful effort. After 17 years of operating almost exclusively on the sidelines of significant recognition - save for a considerable breakthrough the previous year - Pulp had finally arrived in the public consciousness. And they would prove hard to forget. Despite delivering just two more albums - 1998’s dark, disillusioned comedown ‘This is Hardcore’, and 2001’s lush, leisurely farewell ‘We Love Life’ - Pulp’s popularity persists to this day, with both the band’s 2011 and 2023 reunion tours attracting large crowds. It was on said 2023 tour that the possibility of new music first presented itself, with the band practising new song ‘Hymn of the North’ during soundchecks, eventually playing it for an audience at the end of their second night at Sheffield Arena.
Unveiling a new song in front of a hometown crowd clearly unlocked something in the band: by the first half of 2024 they were writing new material (and reviving old ideas), with a three-week recording stint following in the back half. Overseen by Arctic Monkeys producer James Ford, and featuring classic drummer Nick Banks, guitarist Mark Webber, and keyboardist Candida Doyle, as well as Cocker, of course, it was the quickest a Pulp album had ever been recorded. Yet the resulting record, cheekily titled ‘More’, doesn’t feel rushed, far from it. As Jarvis proclaims: “It was obviously ready to happen”.
Nowhere is this more apparent than on lead single and album opener ‘Spike Island’, which feels as instantly classic as any of the band’s 90s hits. Beginning with an addictive drum beat and bouncy bassline, the song settles into a deep disco-groove as Cocker drops the typically absurd anecdote “I was wrestling with the coat hanger, can you guess who won?”, before the singalong chorus harks back to the band’s anthemic Britpop days with an infectious melody ready-made for rowdy arenas and festival fields. “Spike Island come alive, by the way”, Cocker sings in his distinctive higher register, marking the band’s second song to take lyrical inspiration the famous Stone Roses gig (the first being 1995’s ‘Sorted for E’s and Wizz’), despite the fact Cocker didn’t actually attend.
The next track also extends a Pulp tradition, namely that their songs often feature women's names which end in an a (most notably Deborah from ‘Disco 2000’, and the titular Sylvia), and ‘Tina’ lives up to the lineage. Boasting an earworm chorus amidst hushed verses of obsession, ‘Tina’ is vintage Pulp, Cocker recalling “scenes from a marriage that never took place”, lampooning his own delusions with a wink. “We’re really good together/ Cos we never meet”, he sings, before a post-chorus of falsetto, call-and-response “Tina[‘s]” cement the song as a weird, catchy gem, the kind of which looms large in the Pulp catalogue. The next song ‘Grown Ups’ is a bit of a gamble, coming in at 5 minutes and 56 seconds, making it the longest song on the album. Pulp are no stranger to long songs, however, and it pays off brilliantly, stabby keyboards bolstered by a driving riff, as Cocker’s vivid lyrics guide us through his experiences of ageing.
“So you move from Camden, out to Hackney/ And you stress about wrinkles, instead of acne”, he sings in a particularly effective bridge, ramping up the sense of lyrical desperation in tandem with the increasingly urgent music, culminating in the claustrophobic couplet “It’s nearly sunset, and we haven’t had lunch yet/ And I’m sorry for asking, but are we having fun yet?”, suggesting that for Cocker, ageing is not an enjoyable, relaxing proposition, but a kind of futile race against time. In purposeful contrast is the following song ‘Slow Jam’, which does exactly what it says on the tin, and slows things way, way down. Underpinned by a chilled, funky bassline, Cocker proposes that “instead of having us this Slow Death/ We should be having us a Slow Jam”, in what appears to a thinly veiled plea for his lover to go to bed with him, instead of lamenting the inevitable demise of their relationship.
If ‘Slow Jam’ documents the end of a romance, then ‘Farmers Market’ welcomes the first light of a fresh one. Full of delicate strings, dreamy synth lines, jazzy drums, and tender piano, the song is reminiscent of Arctic Monkeys’ 2022 single ‘There’d Better Be A Mirrorball’, perhaps not surprisingly given Ford’s involvement, and the fact that both bands hail from Sheffield, with Cocker’s deep, northern croon almost certainly serving as an inspiration for Alex Turner as he embraced regional, easy listening-esque vocals. Just as Turner did with ‘...Mirrorball’, Cocker sprinkles some gorgeous turns of phrase over this sumptuous sonic backdrop, including perhaps the most beautiful, bittersweet illustration of a middle-aged meet-cute ever set to tape: “You smiled, and I could see that life had got to you too/ But it was nothing serious, just a flesh wound”, he gently talk-sings towards the end of the track, and it’s hard not to be taken aback by the subtle rawness of his words.
The next track ‘My Sex’ serves as an audacious tonal shift, Cocker’s sensual whisper marking a return to the awkward, smutty swagger which powered a considerable amount of Pulp’s biggest hits. Like the rest of ‘More’, though, the passing of time adds a thought-provoking twist to an iconic Pulp trope. Yes, Cocker is still suggesting that “you show me yours, and I’ll show you mine”, but there’s an added sense of necessity. "Hurry cos my sex is running out of time”, he urges, as if life may slip away from him at any moment, a concern no doubt heightened by the death of longtime bassist Steve Mackey in 2023.
Though his fascination with physical pastimes remains undiminished, Cocker is no longer satisfied with purely sexual exploits. At 61 years of age, he’s come to the conclusion that love is what he should really be aspiring to. “Without love, you’re just jerking off inside someone else”, he declares bluntly on second single ‘Got To Have Love’, a disco-pop stomper containing a masterful build and release which will surely prove to be a dizzying highlight live. From here on in we’re in full ballad territory, and while that might not be what Pulp are best known for, it’s arguably the greatest strength of their current iteration. ‘Background Noise’ is a sweeping tale of post-breakup realisation, Cocker comparing love to “the buzzing of a fridge, you only notice when it disappears”, in a melodic, heartfelt chorus which stands apart as one of the album’s greatest moments.
‘Partial Eclipse’ is nice if a little forgettable, though penultimate song ‘Hymn of the North’ is anything but. Beginning with a simple piano refrain that will repeat and develop over the duration, the song slowly builds, Cocker advising those born in the North of England to “please stay in sight of the mainland”, before an intriguing section in which he repeats the line “there’s just one thing you ought to know” in synch with piano stabs mimicking his vocal melody, again bringing to mind Arctic Monkeys’ ‘...Mirrorball’, specifically the Bond-like opening. ‘Hymn of the North’ gets a bit Bondian itself, with an uber dramatic bridge coming out of leftfield in the latter half, all brass, strings and hypnotic vocal lines. Following this brief, bold detour, the song opens back up, eventually quieting down as Cocker signs off: “Please stay in touch with me, in this contactless society/ Anywhere that you may be, The Northern Star leads back to me”, he sings in what could’ve easily been a satisfying end to ‘More’.
However, true to it's title, the album has one more treat in store - a spiritual sequel to 2001’s ‘Sunrise’, we end on the aptly named ‘A Sunset’. A gentle sway of a song featuring lush orchestral flourishes, it’s a fitting way to end the album, and features yet another classic couplet from Cocker: “The first rule of Economics? / Unhappy people, they spend more”, he observes in the kind of amusingly tragic, mundanely sentimental manner that he had mastered 30 years ago, and continues to excel at to this day.
When Pulp reunited for their 2023 tour, they called it ‘This is What We Do for an Encore’, in a nod to their sleazy epic ‘This is Hardcore’. They didn’t know it then, but they weren’t being entirely honest with their audience.
This is what they do for an encore, and they do it damn well.
Words by Ben Left
