Forget the first time. According to Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker, this Wythenshawe Park show will be the last time, at least for a little while, for the sold-out crowd. Pulp has carried on with their Encore tour in ways that didn’t seem possible. A new album, a live album released the same day as their Wythenshawe Park show, and a movie on the horizon. They’ve done everything a successful reunion show should offer and then some. Cocker and the gang push on with what appears to be their penultimate show, a hits-filled affair that throws away many of the slower songs in favour of cementing a party atmosphere. There’ll be no Something Changed within, no bold risks of Acrylic Afternoons or After You. Just the hits and nothing but. It’s the right course of action for the 38,000-strong Wythenshawe Park, a venue that has a troubled sound quality. But it doesn’t hurt the Cocker-fronted band all that much here, for a show that feels like a definite goodbye after a few continuations prior.
There’s no doubting it. Aside from End of the Road, this is it for Pulp. Whether they come back or not, Cocker doesn’t sound all that sure. Don’t let the heartbreak of hearing Pulp are in their final throes distract from an excellent show, though. Outdoor venues are usually a headache. Not just getting there and back, but between the tinnitus-struck left ear and the travel of sound from stage to speaker to audience, it just never feels like quite the right atmosphere. Pulp nail it here, though. Every song that can include the audience, between the O and U split of O.U. (Gone, Gone) to the singalong thrills of Disco 2000 and Spike Island, Pulp perform with a purpose they had started to shift away from on their More tour. They rush through the likes of Sorted for E’s and Wizz, a delightful F.E.E.L.I.N.G. C.A.L.L.E.D. L.O.V.E. and an intricate-sounding blowout for Got to Have Love to bring themselves to that special point where they just couldn’t sound better.
Everything comes together magnificently. Even the rain stopped long before the doors opened. An appearance from Richard Hawley for show closer A Sunset begs the question as to why they wouldn’t have him on before or after an excellent Self Esteem set, but it’s nice to see him all the same. Just when the band is set to call it quits, they land on a setlist that puts them at their very best. Even the likes of Farmers Market and Begging for Change, new songs pooled from the extra talents surrounding the now-legendary four-piece, are well-placed. This is Hardcore is given a special rendition, and the whole night begins to feel like a blur. Such is the case for bands rattling off their hits and sprinkling songs from their latest record into the mix. If this show was intended as a pitch-perfect, no-mistakes send-off to the wider audience, then Pulp has nailed it.
But they may be back, Cocker suggests before the start of Do You Remember the First Time. It’s hard not to get caught up in the hope of there being more. A well-deserved break after four years of touring is bound to come, but what the band achieved during this reunion is quite unlike anything else their peers had managed to do. Pulp found themselves, deservedly so, playing some of the biggest stages of their career. Not bad for a plucky underdog band that has felt like it worked in the shadows for an alternative, misfit-filled crowd, for decades before this show. A tight setlist, strong instrumental style and a frontman whose confidence and knack for understanding the innermost depths of, say, Sunrise or Babies, is still intact. It may be a sunset for the band, but we can only hope it rises again.
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