Pulp – Spike Island (Live) Review

Infamous gigs leave their mark in more ways than memory. You can still feel, smell and touch those specifics. Those people you were with, the place you were and the artist on stage. For many, it will be Knebworth this or Spike Island that, the latter for Jarvis Cocker has certainly left its mark. Spike Island, a song as much about the making of a band on the immortal stage as it is about the audience inspired by it, is a neat way of working back through the influential spots of the Pulp back catalogue. Their as-yet-unreleased single, first performed in the United States, is a moment of genuine fear from the band. Make up your mind about it, Cocker told the Chicago crowd. That we have. Plant yourself in the Aragon Hall and make up what you will about an obvious lead but a telling, touching piece from a Pulp project yet to be announced.  

Cheap it may be to say this is a return to their classic sound, it is hard to escape the whining synths and the slick guitar work from Mark Webber which opens this one up. Spike Island is like a slice of His ‘n’ Hers, a period where the sticky synths of the 1980s were being stretched to their very limit – a desire to turn disastrous and consequential moments of everyday-like feelings into feverish Europop. The world may shrug its shoulders at an action or inaction but some will be defined by that moment forever. Move on from it, as Cocker does on the punchy excesses of Spike Island. An excellent hook and a higher pitch from Cocker mark a few risks in the foundations of Spike Island that work incredibly well. It is one thing to set these songs apart from their latter works, another entirely to improve on the lower vocal tones of After You or the Jarv Is… project of 2020.  

Pulp, then, finds themselves at a crossroads. Do they revive their sound or continue with new expressions? Both. Ultimately there is an acceptance of familiarity to Spike Island that has it settle in well with the rest of the set but also a fundamental risk, an urgency to recreate what was so successful the first time around. Not to repeat the highs but to understand what makes them work, and why they still work today. It is hard in these early stages to pick a so-called best of these new songs, but Spike Island has the punchy essentialism of any great Pulp song – the boom of telling someone to swivel on it, the colloquial joys of all those days leading up to some big epiphany. All of it comes to a head on Spike Island, a song which sounds relatively complete on the Chicago stage.  

What comes of it is, at time of writing, unknowable. We let the optimism burn a little longer before being extinguished as the anticipation overlaps with just about anything the band could do bar play a set in your living room. Spike Island sounds exceptional and for Pulp it is an opportunity to explore their influences a little more, as has been the case for these autobiographies which are now releasing like clockwork, one or two a year as a chance to look back on the glory days. They are eyeing up their next ones, the new revolution of their sound. Some may say they are long past the time to do it, but others, like their contemporaries Blur and Suede, prove it is never too late to make good on a legacy. Spike Island is certainly proving it, too.