Slouching next to the sound barrier is the second-best way to experience Pulp on this More tour. Top of the charts is still two rows from the front, using the aged attendees as a cushion for your cracked kneecap. Looking forward at the fans, however, offers a new perspective of the endearing band. Frontman Jarvis Cocker throwing shapes made elsewhere by electrocuted scarecrows, lurching across and launching grapes and Cadbury Fudge at attendees from Birmingham (Burningham, as Cocker calls it because of this agonising heatwave), paints quite the picture. If one more review notes the “born to perform” line from Spike Island, which remains an outstanding replacement to the affair-having lyrics of I Spy as show opener, we should be demanding Dogs Are Everywhere replace it. The logistics of that seem impossible as the two-hour-plus interval is both rigid for the sake of consistent performance, yet loose enough to offer enough spontaneity and surprise to warrant seeing the band four times on one tour.
With a number one album behind them, their first since This is Hardcore, Pulp are back and bounding around the stage with a new energy. It was a real effort getting the band to this point for the Encore tour, and it felt as though things were winding down nicely. No longer. Pulp could enter the Suede territory and continue forever more, and given the quality of their live performances, we can only hope they do. More maintains its place on the setlist in an ever-exciting display. Reflection leads our minds and hearts to wherever we let it, and for Cocker, it means retroactively assessing the darker moments in Pulp’s discography. The Fear is no longer a comedown, retching up on stagnant waterbeds, but a warning for the future and the disgusting use of generative artificial intelligence. Help the Aged has an ironic tinge to it – Pulp’s frontman is now the older lover who cannot hit that blistering high note. Audience participation is what gets him, and the rest of the expectedly in-form band, through the show.
That is not a misstep, Pulp has made up for those removed high notes with some outstanding contemporary material and a phenomenal hit list of Do You Remember the First Time, Babies, and Common People. Those in attendance, screaming for Razzmatazz in the interval, are as much in charge of the mood as Cocker and company. Where the band may guide us through the dingy Limit basement and the euphoria which comes from pills, spills, and dancing the night away, the second act is an excuse to lay the hits bare and reassess their status in the modern day. Reflection is not the purpose of the show, nor was it the case for More, which features heavily on the setlist. Got to Have Love remains an exceptional transition between the hits of the past, while Farmers Market brings out a side of Pulp which remained a mere tease on We Love Life.
There is an earnestness to their sound, to the feeling the band are capable of conjuring. Another tight set from Pulp. It’s what you should expect of chart-toppers. Cocker and company can milk that for as long as they like, as he does when brandishing the trophy given to the group for More. Quality assured from the group, a must-see live act whose second coming was unexpected, but long may it continue. There will come a time when the core unit needs to be assembled once more in the Peak District, to figure out whether they can still play these songs. We can only hope they do, because the quality of their live shows has hit a new peak on this latest tour. There is surely more to come.
