Pulp – The Man Comes Around Review

Kicking on from coming alive, Pulp turns to veteran Johnny Cash for tales of death and perseverance. The Man Comes Around featured on the David Tennant-starring The Hack but has received a standalone release, out of the blue. It’ll release later next year with two More demo songs, but The Man Comes Around, a cover of an all-time great track, is out there now, in the wilderness. Any artist tackling a song by Cash is in trouble of biting off more than they can chew, but the admiration Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker has for the Man in Black is clear. He wouldn’t have selected I See a Darkness as a Desert Island Discs choice if he did not have a love and understanding of Cash’s best. The Man Comes Around is one of the best, and it sounds like an odd choice from Pulp to cover. But then that feeds into the appearance of Pulp, the ideals the band has survived on and rekindled with their latest reunion.  

Out-there and oddities are their bread and butter, which The Man Comes Around becomes. The Man Comes Around is a bold, exciting cover from a band that proved reinvention suits them. They are not here to retread old tones but to reignite the fire, be it with contemporary material or complete change-ups of classic tracks. The latter is more surprising than the former. Pulp are not exactly known for their covers and to hear them adapt so well to finding the new intimacies of a song written by another artist is a fascinating listen. A great listen, too. For those who watched the Jarv Is performance live from the centre of the Earth, the slower drawl Cocker gives to the spoken-word opening for The Man Comes Around will feel wonderfully familiar. It’s that distant wonder, the everyday explored, that is captured so well by this rendition.  

Instrumentally, The Man Comes Around has that flavoursome style of modern-day Pulp. The core unit of Mark Webber, Nick Banks, and Candida Doyle are present here with those ever excellent instrumentals, but it does feel as though The Man Comes Around is reliant more on the new members than the veterans. Not because there is a shift but because the extra depths provided by Adam Betts and Emma Smith are clear. Boisterous is what they aim for, and it’s what they get when all those instrumental additions are made, a few flairs built on the foundations Webber, Doyle, and Banks provide. Cocker’s slower delivery, the softer touch compared to the acoustic classic Cash provided, captures the same emotional flourishes but brings about a slightly positive spin.  

Cash was, naturally, reflecting on age and death on the original. It was filled with fear but acceptance. What Cocker brings to The Man Comes Around is not an acceptance but an appreciation for the end times. Life is a celebration when we know it comes to a close, but it’s easy to forget that when wrapped up in the moment. Repeating “kick against the pricks” has that Running the World repetition Cocker would utilise so well in his solo career, and he adapts those brilliantly here with some nicely layered vocal work for the build towards “alpha and omega”. What’s lost in the fierce stand-off with death on The Man Comes Around is made up for by reinterpreting an all-time great Cash track. Pulp finds a way through and implores a listener to do so, too. Celebrate the out-there moments, the risk taken in a band known for their alternative rock charms adapting a country classic. Wonderfully familiar but instrumentally different, that’s the crucial part of this adaptation of The Man Comes Around.