Reconnecting with Lipgloss after it reappeared, however briefly, in Pulp’s live shows was a treat. It’s a song which is on the cusp of being an all-timer for the band. Frozen out by the likes of Common People and This is Hardcore, it finds itself on the level below. Good company to be found on that level, with Bad Cover Version and Live Bed Show loitering there. It’s a limbo of not being strong enough to be a staple of the set but worthy of an occasional outing. Should the mood suit, Lipgloss becomes a towering beast of a Pulp song. It’s a track with real grit to it, that lived-in occasion and mind-wandering truth separates Pulp from their contemporaries. It still does. The His ‘n’ Hers rip is a powerful bit of work from the Jarvis Cocker-fronted band. Pulp spent much of their pre-Different Class effort pulling apart irreverent walks of life, and Lipgloss is comfortable with that strangeness.
Pulp has always been a band whose commentaries on sex go beyond the act. It’s about seduction and the strength of those little details which attract one person to another. Lipgloss has a horrifying notion to its story. What if that “it factor” was lost? It details it well, the loss of satisfaction comes first, the breakdown of social skills is recognised second. Those scraps are not enough to thrive on, let alone survive. But it’s all part of the sharper, wider read of culture that Cocker and the band still possess. Lipgloss has someone struggling out of a soured relationship, but realising the comfort is what they were clinging to as they’ve lost all the chances they had in the wider world. Not just the loss of their world but a realisation that adapting to the next one means shaving the rust and muck off of long dormant social skills. Lipgloss in a modern-day context is a song which calls for us to stop ourselves before the point of no return. Before those social skills are lost for good.
In some cases, it has been. There is a nuance to Lipgloss which highlights the damage we do to ourselves when leading ourselves along in a dissatisfied fashion. All we have are the foundations of what it is to be alive, and no amount of calling friends, hoping for fresh starts, can change that. Pulp has that come to life on a song which, thanks to its success, kept the band together. Russell Senior’s guitar work here is nothing short of sensational, tinged with that Europop beat found on Separations. Paired with the electronic thrills Candida Doyle offers the song, and a menacing solo from Senior, it’s hard not to think of Lipgloss as one of the band’s very best offerings. A song that highlights the gross collapse not of society, but the skills needed for its upkeep.
Lipgloss keeps hold of those biting commentaries and makes them sound larger, broader, and deeper than first thought. It’s a song of doomed relationships and moments of significance in the idle city centre of Sheffield, but beyond that, it’s a warning to those in the future. People take for granted the everyday interactions, the song suggests. Isolation is bliss to a degree, but those social skills are needed, whether it’s to keep the heart of a relationship still beating or to pass the time in chat while traipsing around a supermarket. Whatever the case, Lipgloss sounds off the failures of consistent, quality conversation between two lovers, now former, because the diet of monotony doesn’t look all that good on them. It’s a masterclass of a song, one of those defining moments from Pulp which still defines how the band operates.
