Album review: Pulp give us More
When Pulp revealed they would be releasing a comeback album, it’s safe to say fans were beside themselves with excitement. But surely the band’s first LP in 24 years couldn’t possibly live up to the sheer weight of expectation?
Well actually, and joyfully, it absolutely does, as More represents a brilliant return from the Sheffield legends. And most pleasing and remarkable is that – while some of it sounds like pre-His n Hers Pulp and some of it feels like the logical progression from 1995’s Different Class – none of it is done in a backwards-looking, tribute band kind of way. There’s a strong sense of the passing of time, and the album’s vivacity is counterbalanced by moments of reflection, maturity, age.
Standout track Grown Ups is a six-minute epic which could be a relation of Sheffield: Sex City from Intro. “You stress about wrinkles instead of acne,” Jarvis Cocker sings, before later asking: “Why am I telling this story? I can’t remember.” Meanwhile, in a parallel universe, poppy and danceable singles Spike Island and Got To Have Love would have followed Different Class, had the band not taken a left turn with the outstanding but dark This is Hardcore. Who knows how stratospheric that would have sent them?
Elsewhere there are moments of tenderness, like on The Hymn of the North (“You fill my heart, you fill my dreams, and my only hope is you succeed”), while album-closer Sunset offers melancholic ruminations (“I’d like to teach the world to sing, but I do not have a voice”). And a Pulp album wouldn’t be complete without some grubbiness, such as “You show my yours and I’ll show you mine” from My Sex, and tales of reminiscence, as delivered on Tina, “Do you remember walking past me in the snow? 14 years ago.”
Before the surprise announcement of the reunion gigs a couple of years ago – and with Cocker ensconced in his other project, JARV IS – it seemed that we would never hear from Pulp again, let alone be gifted such a stunning album. Yet, delightfully here were are, with a record which is both loyal to their history and very much positioned in the now.
The album’s title is apt. With this new release, Pulp have given us more than we could possibly have hoped for.
Review by Bobby Townsend.
