Pulp - More Review
A tender, funny and gloriously overstuffed return from pop’s greatest misfits, reckoning with time, tenderness and the strange thrill of still being here.
Britpop was one of those scenes where virtually none of the acts associated with it particularly relished the label, and in most cases actively rejected it. And of all the bands who rose to fame around that time, Pulp probably sat most uncomfortably of all under that banner. A band of misfits, fronted by the gawky Jarvis Cocker, dressed in charity shop chic of drainpipe flares, tanktop and NHS specs, they looked like refugees from the 1970s. Indeed they’d already been toiling in obscurity for well over a decade until their moment finally came, culminating in a legendary Glastonbury set, standing in at the last minute for the absent Stone Roses, where Cocker’s class politics anthem was belted back at them by hundreds of thousands of people.
You could say the rest is history, but when Pulp announced they were splitting after the tepidly received We Love Life at the turn of the millennium, no one really seemed to bat an eyelid. Like practically all the other acts who’d embodied the zeitgeist so definitively, a few years later they were completely out of time. Since then, Jarvis has gradually become something of a national treasure, a witty and astute observer of pop and culture, he’s kept his eye in with myriad side projects but never reached the same heights of fame, nor notoriety.
But given their implausibly long and winding career arc, maybe a Pulp comeback should never have been discounted. Along with sex, class and cigarettes, Jarvis Cocker has always been fascinated with the idea of growing up, and growing old; his oeuvre is littered with songs expressing the joy and isolation of youth as well as the fear and exhilaration of growing up. When he sang all those years ago about meeting up in the year 2000, it seemed impossibly far away, yet here we are in 2025 and it’s even stranger, now we’re all fully grown. And somehow Pulp have pulled off the incredible feat of creating a comeback album bathed in beautiful nostalgia yet searingly honest about what it means to have well and truly grown up.
The resplendent opening track and lead single, Spike Island, stakes its flag on a seminal 90s landmark, The Stone Roses’’ legendary gig there in 1990, where the burgeoning scenes of indie and rave converged in an event often termed the ‘Woodstock of the 90s’. In reality, the day was beset by technical issues, and the resounding memory for Jason Buckle of The All-Seeing I, who co-wrote the track, was an MC continuously repeating the phrase “Spike Island come alive” between every song in an attempt to get the vibe going.
The track itself is Pulp at their anthemic best, a strutting disco bassline, syrupy synths and soaring guitar that more than nod in The Stone Roses’ direction. The pointedly self-aware lyrics offer a recap as to where Jarvis has been for the last 20 years before the beat and bass give way to a blissful breakdown that induces the euphoria of rave without aping it. It’s joyous and life affirming while acknowledging that none of us know what we’re doing, “It’s a guess, No idea, It’s a feeling, Not a voice, In my Head, Just a feeling”.
After the majestic splendour of Spike Island, we’re pulled straight back to a dank bedsit in Sheffield on Tina, which sees Jarvis breathily ruminating on a woman he’s watched from afar but never had the courage to talk to. The specificness of the observations tend to the uncomfortable side of creepy but this is offset by the romantic strings, and it soon becomes clear Tina is actually an avatar for every such encounter that never was, all those opportunities not taken that leave you wondering what might have been
But it’s the following track, Grown Ups which really delivers the emotional sucker punch at the heart of More. The incisive observations: Cocker’s horror at a friend who said he moved near the motorway because it was good for commuting, “I laughed in his face because I thought he was joking” and delightful one-liners, rhyming Hackney wirth acne are sufficient to make it a classic Pulp track. But it’s the gut-wrenching realisation that dawns on you by the end of the track, that all these young people who were desperate to grow up are now desperate to return to a place that’s forever out of reach.
As with anything suffering the effects of age, there are some saggy bits. Partial Eclipse seems to offer a solar event as a metaphor for an erection, and the innuendo-laden My Sex was slightly ruined for me by a Youtube commenter who likened it to a Lonely Island track. But ultimately, it’s a triumph of a record. James Ford’s production is luxurious; Pulp’s approach often erred towards the maximal - Common People was reportedly built from upwards of 50 tracks - but in this incarnation as a nine-piece, every instrument is given space to breath and punches its weight. Welcoming disco throb rubs shoulders with the sleazy 70s pulse of Roxy Music and strings are applied generously
Jarvis Cocker went through a divorce in 2009 and it seems like many of the songs are inspired by that event, although another, Farmers Market is a wounded but ultimately redemptive ballad about finding a new love later in life. That sense, of being wounded but still expecting the best from life, characterises much of the album. And when More threatens to bow under its own weightiness, the penultimate track The Hymn of the North casts a bright light. Led by a simple but insistent piano refrain, and presumably written for Cocker’s son, it’s heartfelt and honest, looking out instead of in, passing the baton from age to youth.
The sleeve contains a note saying, ‘This is the best we can do’. More manages to somehow pick up, not where Pulp left off with the muted We Love Life, but directly from their mid-90s pomp. Littered as it is with references to their back catalogue, and throwaway lines that quote classic tracks. It’s an origin story - and a sequel - and if it turns out to be their ultimate swan song, then it surely the best we could have hoped for.