More by Pulp review: 'smart cultural brushstrokes'
Jarvis Cocker and co resist the urge to wallow in Britpop nostalgia on More, an idiosyncratic, yarn-spinning gem of an album, writes Fiona Shepherd
Pulp: More (Rough Trade) ★★★★
Back in their Glastonbury-headlining mid-Nineties pomp, Pulp were Sorted for E’s & Wizz. Thirty years on, frontman Jarvis Cocker returns to the same source of inspiration to write comeback single Spike Island, despite never having attended the notorious Stone Roses show.
Happily, Spike Island is not some slice of easy Britpop nostalgia to herald Pulp’s first album in almost a quarter of a century but rather more idiosyncratic Cocker yarn-spinning, with devilish detail and smart cultural brushstrokes.
It is not the most musically audacious return but the rest of More makes up for that. Tina evokes spaghetti western (spaghetti northern?) soundtracks with Cocker reminiscing in tragicomic, even slightly sinister style on unrequited love. Grown Ups captures the illicit thrill and romance of the first flush of adolescent independence, a trip which begins, in typical Cocker style, with “the moon went behind a petrochemical plant”. Precisely no one has described More as a kitchen sink concept album but Tina crops up here too so there are thematic threads to be pulled.
Cocker outlines a landscape of coat-checks and car parks in the whimsical waltz of Farmers Market. It’s a gem of romantic bathos – darling, remember that time when “I thought ‘hold on! Are these groceries really that important?’” In contrast, Background Noise is a quietly devastating meditation on not knowing what you’ve got until it’s gone.
Cocker can’t resist the curtain-twitching of old. My Sex sounds like a cousin to F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E, with additional robotic female backing vocals and brief flurries of disco strings, while stream-of-consciousness rant Got to Have Love delivers a full disco flourish.
More ends gracefully with the touching appeal of Hymn of the North, which develops into a symphonic Pulp epic, before this beloved band ride off into A Sunset to the sound of a spindly violin.
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