While the Gallagher brothers scrabble around in the dirt for their rich pickings, an altogether more dignified experience is on offer from Sheffield. More is Pulp’s first album for 24 years, which is a sobering fact for those of us who still remember the first time. Thankfully, this isn’t a reprisal of past glories but a vibrant and moving work of some significance. They’ve ripened delightfully and are living proof that age does not diminish creativity or relevance.
The title of the first single had me worried. While slightly dreading a return to having left an important part of my brain somewhere in a field in Hampshire, “Spike Island” turns out to be an absolute Cocker corker and is as good as anything they’ve produced before – if not better (although I heard the lyric as "By the way, Spike Island woke up and ran away," which I think adds something). As ever, humour jostles alongside humility – “I was born to perform, it’s a calling/I exist to do this, shouting and pointing.” The second single also boded well. Despite starting with what sounds spookily like the guitar intro to Radiohead’s “Street Spirit”, “Got To Have Love” pivots into a euphoric celebration of that most elusive yet most hankered-for emotion. Never forgetting “without love, you’re just jerking off inside someone else.”
But what’s the rest of it like? Well, it smacks of James Frost’s production, that’s for sure. And it’s packed full of witty observations, catchy tunes, pomp and passion. It’s Pulp at their finest. “Slow Jam” is – obviously – a seductive, funky sashay into matters of mortality. It’s also a prime example of the multi-dimensional, multi-layered construction of Pulp’s music – something that sometimes over-looked because of Cocker’s gigantic personality. It’s hard not to be swept along with the excitement of “Farmers Market” – a love song about Cocker’s new wife. It’s delicate, passionate and uplifting – a paen to starting again after mid-life.
“Tina” is the most reminiscent of the old days, and to my mind the weakest track on the album, almost tripping headlong into parody. “Grown Ups” tackles the inevitability of ageing while – like most of us – being in unrelenting denial (“so you move from Camden out to Hackney/and you stress about wrinkles instead of acne”). Nobody can nail the zeitgeist quite like Jarvis. The epically sprawling, dynamic “The Hymn of the North” includes the simply brilliant line “please stay in touch with me/In this contactless society”. “I haven’t got an agenda/I haven’t even got a gender” is another 2025-appropriate lyric, nestled within “My Sex”, which has more than a feeling of Jar Vis (Cocker’s solo project) about it.
The melancholic sign-off, “A Sunset” weighs up the ridiculous comparison between nature and money, lived experience and living by and for numbers. As ever, there’s plenty to ponder here, enough to dance to and more melodies to make memories to. We’re lucky to have them back, and in fine fettle. Here’s hoping this isn’t “one last sunset/One final blaze of glory”.
