More
Certainly, any Pulp fan who caught the long-dormant Britpop legends on their 2024 reunion tour would’ve been completely satisfied with just hearing the ’90s classics we never thought we’d get to hear performed live again. But the surprise inclusion of some new tunes on the set list made it clear Jarvis Cocker and co. were not interested in being a mere nostalgia act. And now, less than a year later, Pulp has gifted us with a new album—and while it arrives 24 years after their last one, *More* actually came together with unprecedented expedience. “The previous two Pulp records \[2001’s *We Love Life* and 1998’s *This Is Hardcore*\] had a bit of a concept for them, and that slowed everything down,” Cocker tells Apple Music. “And this time I just thought, let’s not think about it. Let’s do it. And then you’ve got a lot of time to think about it later. Like the rest of your life, for instance.” With *More*, Pulp carries on as if the first two decades of the 21st century never happened, restoring their singular balance of disco decadence (“Spike Island,” “Got to Have Love”) and string-swept elegance (“Tina,” “Farmers Market”). As the elder black sheep of Britpop, Pulp always possessed a self-deprecating wit and lived-in wisdom that distinguished them from their more brash, lager-swilling peers, and as such, they were always less interested in glorifying youthful hedonism than probing adult relationships. So they can effortlessly reclaim their role as Britain’s shrewdest observers of social manners and misbehavior even as Cocker has crossed the threshold into his sixties. *More* is imbued with the simmering anxieties of a singer who knows he’s not getting any younger: Echoing the streetwise strut of Iggy Pop’s “The Passenger,” the urgent “Grown Ups” finds the guy who once sang “Help the Aged” starting to “stress about wrinkles instead of acne” himself, while the Spector-esque splendor of “Background Noise” closes the curtain on a long-term coupling where familiary has curdled into contempt. But even by the group’s sophisticated standards, piano ballad “The Hymn of the North” (featuring Chilly Gonzales) is a breathtaking display of melancholy and majesty that affirms Pulp is still in a different class all their own.
After 24 years, Jarvis Cocker and his baroque-pop band return to remind you, with rakish wit and horny wisdom, that your whole life is just one big coming-of-age saga.
Let us celebrate More for what it is: a surprisingly thoughtful and often breathtaking coda to Pulp’s wonderful career.
Assisted by James Ford, Jarvis Cocker and co return with their first album in 24 years and a mature but vital response to the second summer of Britpop
Band’s first album in 24 years accomplishes the transition between fan-settling familiarity and creative advancement
On their first album in over two decades, Pulp demonstrate that revisiting the past can yield genuinely uncompromising and organic rewards.
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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
What Pulp haven't lost is their innate Englishness: ballads recall grocery shops, summer festivals, and farmers' markets, but the results are disappointing.
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Jarvis Cocker and the band’s first album in 24 years delivers a refreshing take on middle age, with all the the skewed observation and joyful melodic flourishes of old
Pulp’s first album in 24 years is full of the lust and laughter that first made Jarvis Cocker the witty, charismatic frontman of Britpop
Pulp’s first album for 24 years features a fantastic opening track, then a grim drizzle of indie plodders
The very opposite of past it, this immersive offering is perfectly timed. New msuic review by KAthryn Reilly