Album Review: More by Pulp

Releasing new music after such a long period of hiatus poses risks, especially as the Sheffield group enjoyed such a superb run of records up until their split in 2002. At worst, it can result in a painful, nostalgia-mining exercise and a laborious retread of former glories. In the lead up to Pulp's eighth LP - and their first in 24 years - you'd be forgiven for holding reservations.

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So THIS is what they do for an encore When Pulp announced their reunion in 2022, everyone presumed it would be a similar situation when they last reformed in 2012 – a few nostalgia-baiting shows for fans seeking a return to their Britpop days, desperate to see Jarvis Cocker point that finger one last time. And, for a while, that’s precisely how it seemed. Then came the surprising announcement that Sheffield’s favourite band of misfits had signed an album deal with Rough Trade.

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It's fair to say 1998's follow-up, the sprawling This Is Hardcore, didn't exactly capitalize on this mid (late?)-career success (remember "Help the Aged"?), and their final album, 2001's under-heard and underrated We Love Life, barely made an impact. Thus did Pulp live out their 15 minutes, remaining staunch in the disc-carousels of discerning millennials afterwards, but largely exiting the zeitgeist for most -- although Cocker would eventually become familiar to Gen Z as Myron Wagtail, lead singer of "wizard band" the Weird Sisters in the Harry Potter universe. A new Pulp album certainly isn't the first thing many of us would have searched for in the cauldron, but here we are.

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On their first album since 2001's We Love Life, Pulp offer a warmth and immediacy rare in late-career revivals. More feels richly lived-in yet remarkably contemporary, lifted by Richard Jones' lush, cinematic string arrangements - they're particularly striking on Partial Eclipse, whose outro drifts into a moody, Giacchino-esque beauty, reminiscent of the title card score from Lost. Album opener Spike Island instantly charms with producer James Ford's recognisable percussion riding aside Jarvis Cocker, all shimmer and gossamer, its rhythmic flourishes crafting an inviting sonic warmth that makes familiarity thrilling rather than stale.

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Some things just take time. The perfect brew , for example, isn't to be hurried. Such is the case with new Pulp albums. Famously, the Sheffield band hold the record for the longest gaps between Peel sessions - 12 years, in fact . Not to be outdone, new album 'More' is their first full length ….

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"Help the aged / One time they were just like you / Drinking, smoking cigs and sniffing glue…" Twenty-six years after Pulp released 'Help The Aged', Jarvis Cocker now finds himself at an age where he can claim a free London bus pass. The dividing line between young and old that served as a comedy trope with a touch of pathos in that hit song is no longer just vanishingly thin but has disappeared altogether. The definition of old gets slipperier, of course, especially from a personal perspective as landmarks are reached and left behind in the rear-view mirror.

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When Pulp made their much feted live comeback in 2023 (with their This Is What We Do For An Encore tour), there was only the merest whisper that it might be the start of, well, 'More'. Nearly 24 years since their last release - 2001's 'We Love Life' - this new album arrives with something of a question encoded in its grooves: why now? The answer, it seems, is twofold. Firstly, why not? It's what they know best; it's where they thrive most ("I was born to perform / It's a calling / I exist to do this / Shouting and pointing" Jarvis Cocker intones self-deprecatingly on anthemic lead single 'Spike Island').

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What happens to them all? The mis-shapes, mistakes and misfits? The revenge-obsessed, randy amateur spies? The legendary girlfriends? The stragglers who've partied too hard and mislaid part of their brain in a field somewhere in Hampshire? What happens when the passions of youth dwindle? When hedonistic impulses are curbed and the cosmic waffle of smoking-area chat gives way to small talk about commutes? When weekends revolve around farmers' markets rather than the razzmatazz of nights on the tiles? What happens when Pulp people grow up? If you're Jarvis Cocker, you write More, the first Pulp album since 2001's We Love Life, to make sense of it all. "We're hoping that we don't get shown up," he admits on the swaggering, Camden-circa-'95 knees-up of Grown Ups, a song abandoned during the This Is Hardcore sessions - presumably as it was too Britpop - and given new life here. But as the song finds another gear, the dread of being caught winging it at adulthood is replaced by defiance ("I am not ageing/No, I am ripening… One last sunset/One final blaze of glory").

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Pulp's first single in over a decade, "Spike Island," grapples with Jarvis Cocker's mixed feelings about the song's very existence. He reflects about the unhappiness that seeped into the band's music after they hit it big in the mid '90s: "I was heading for disaster/And then I turned back." Yet he remains torn between rejecting the glare of the spotlight and feeling that "I was born to perform/It's a calling." It's a hell of a way to reintroduce the Britpop icons. Some oddly deconstructed influences pop up on More, Pulp's first album in 23 years.

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