Pulp – More Review

A knock to the confidence of frontman Jarvis Cocker puts him on an unlikely course. A Pulp reunion celebrating This is Hardcore morphed into something the band were surely not expecting. Their first album in twenty-four years, More, is a tackling of familiar subjects from a new angle. There is still the flair, sarcasm, and spirit which define the band and their classics, but there is now an instinctual guidance, a sense of following the heart rather than fearing it, at play. Pulp has succeeded where most bands fail. Reinvention is not the purpose of a reunion, nor is reflection. Both are routes to lazy nostalgia. There may be plenty of callbacks tucked neatly into More, but this only adds to the spirit and growth heard throughout. Cocker and the gang pull at the past in the hope of figuring out the future, and they make an impressive show of it. 

With wild and refreshing instrumental tones backing them, Pulp find themselves dealing with a series of personal taboos. Fears of love, of sincerity, are broken down brilliantly on the anthemic second single, Got to Have Love. Cocker sounds confident of his place in the world, an honest contrast to the outsider looking in heard on His ‘n’ Hers, or the out-of-body isolation of This is Hardcore. Gone are the stylish, hand-wringing hopes of an observer imagining intimacy. In comes a new connection with what had, during the band’s first run, been longed for. Lead single Spike Island promised not just that the band were coming alive, but were doing it right on their second time around. They hardly put a step wrong when they last entered the studio, but More is an assured release guided by tough love.  

Pulling from We Love Life, Jarv Is…, and Richard Hawley collaborations, More is aided, not hindered, by this assembly of odds and ends. Cocker is heard tying together the threads of life, and what comes from it is a perfectly balanced shot of contemporary thrills from a band both on the outskirts of contemporary culture yet capable of selling out stadiums. A storyline overlap for Tina and Grown Ups adds a delicate extra layer to those close encounters, the what ifs which plague the mind not just of frontman Cocker, but listeners too. Pulp has always been a vital link between the everyday and the extraordinary, and More is no exception to this. Fixations on details nobody else appears to remember are what make More so unique. Moment after moment of Cocker writing through a part of history which is so personal, yet applicable to the people around us.

Ghostly tones which open Hymn of the North, a surprisingly amplified song where a midpoint tonal shift hammers home the last few moments of More, hold the same grieving that Leaving the Table by Leonard Cohen has. Not for a person, though, but for a people, a community ravaged by time and never helped. That crucial Pulp core, the much-needed and welcome focus on Mark Webber as a broad-ranging guitarist, as well as the dependable brilliance of sex pond builder and Everly Pregnant Brothers’ Nick Banks, and the beating heart of Pulp, Candida Doyle, blends well with the newcomers. Jarv Is… trio Andrew McKinney, Emma Smith, and Adam Betts are more than just honorary members of the band, with their work throughout More finding that sweet spot between contemporary and comfortably classic. Outstanding instrumental additions from this growing core, which also includes Jason Buckle and the Elysian Collective, back the hopes and horrors of hyperspecific encounters.

From the impressive clothing displays of Tina, the imagined relationship with a stranger on the train, to the freedoms of life without expectation heard on follow-up Grown Ups, the story carried through is magnificent. More has Pulp adapt to some wild differences to their sound, tonal changes and topics the band has never dealt with until now. Spaced-out sounds on Grown Ups note the destination is sometimes not worth the journey, while the moody, crushingly slow sound of Slow Jam, a Jarv Is… piece fitted into place on More, has Cocker contemplate a higher power at work. A doubt-ridden mind turning to any extreme, every source of love over sixty years, across a near hour of the very sharpest writing Cocker has put out since This is Hardcore. Pulp scatters itself across jazz lounge baroque on Farmers Market, danceable rock charm on Got to Have Love and sentimental acoustics on A Sunset. Their Hawley-penned album closer has a touch of Running the World to it, placing Cocker on a cultural commentary knife edge. Key to it all, though, is the same fundamental which has been present on every Pulp album to date. Inexhaustible love.  

Cocker tears down the walls around his heart with the likes of Farmers Market and My Sex, figuring out the true beauty of life by revisiting moments where the heart beats that little bit faster. Spoken-word charms are all the rage for More, though there are still moments where Cocker is pushed to a new limit, sparks where his vocal range is of the His ‘n’ Hers quality, though paired with the lower octave Beyond the Pale made use of. Self-referential songs like Background Noise are backed not by a satisfaction with links to the past but by a desire to learn from it. Pulp explores the peaks and valleys of life with such an infectious honesty it is hard not to look at your own after a few listens. Cocker does away with grander ideas and focuses on the beauty of intimacy, the initial shock of it on Partial Eclipse or the grief in its absence on Background Noise.  

Grief runs through More, though with a subtle and almost necessary distance from the core meaning. The passing of Pulp bassist Steve Mackey, and later Cocker’s mother, has kindled the creative spirit. More may dedicate itself to heart-dropping moments, the instances of adrenaline which come with the losses and gains of love, but it is created with the spirit of being alive. Got to Have Love feels like a response to the doubts which define the band as a unique voice. More is a welcome extension of their discography because they refuse to play on nostalgia, yet find a way to incorporate those familiar tones, the intertextuality which can be heard in the likes of Bad Cover Version and Dishes. Separating the impact but feeling for the meaning is a borderline impossible goal, though Pulp has managed it.  

A double blow of sympathetic sincerity with Hymn of the North and A Sunset is a perfect end for More. One a companion piece to Last Day of the Miner’s Strike, the other a challenging and bittersweet curtain call which notes the end of We Love Life’s Sunrise. Whether the sun dawns on a studio with Pulp inside of it again down the line, who knows? What does become clear, though, is the quality of More. Pulp proves to be as genuine as they always were, indifferent to the context of a legacy and willing to push their sound that much further. Borderline autobiographical at times, though blurring the line between fictionalised recollections and the odd remembrance of minor details, from digestive biscuits in charity shops to the awkward pleasantries at some market, out there in some field, is a neat touch. Growing up is fine, as long as you don’t get old. Cocker finds the line between the two in a series of personable highs, all of which feature that fundamental Pulp energy, that push for more. It is the band going beyond their very best.