Jarvis Cocker has not ruled out another Pulp album despite the band playing their last show “for a while” at End of the Road Festival. The Cocker-fronted group bowed out from touring earlier this month, performing a set filled with deep cuts and first-time performances for some of their most understated songs.
In a recent interview with The Guardian alongside film director Garth Jennings, Cocker suggested there may be more material to come from Pulp. The band released More, their first album in twenty-four years, back in 2025 and received a Mercury Prize nomination. Songs like Spike Island and Got to Have Love, which featured on the chart-topping album, became live set staples.
Further material followed, with a cover of Johnny Cash’s The Man Comes Around and a War Child album contribution, Begging for Change. Cocker has since suggested that there could be another album in “the next couple of years” in an interview given to promote the release of upcoming concert film Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore?
Cocker said: “You know, it’s like a tree. A tree doesn’t decide it’s going to grow. If the weather’s right, it’ll grow a branch. And if the intellectual weather is right in the next couple of years, maybe we’ll sprout another record.” When the band reformed back in 2023, there had been no discussion of new material.
But a performance of Hymn of the North during the band’s second Sheffield show in 2023 sprouted a want for new material. Cocker said shortly before the release of More: “This is the first Pulp album since We Love Life in 2001. Yes: the first Pulp album for 24 years. How did that happen?
“Well: when we started touring again in 2023, we practised a new song called Hymn of the North during soundchecks & eventually played it at the end of our second night at Sheffield Arena. This seemed to open the floodgates: we came up with the rest of the songs on this album during the first half of 2024. A couple are revivals of ideas from last century.
“The music for one song was written by Richard Hawley. The music for another was written by Jason Buckle. The Eno family sing backing vocals on a song. There are string arrangements written by Richard Jones & played by the Elysian Collective.”
While there are no touring plans for Pulp in 2027, the band will be “going to see Abba Voyage together” in October to celebrate their four years on the road. This has included two world tours, a special full playthrough of More at the Southbank Centre, and a secret Glastonbury Festival slot where the band performed the likes of Disco 2000 and Common People.
Some Pulp band members, including guitarist Mark Webber, were convinced the band wouldn’t get back together at all, let alone release new material. Webber explained: “I didn’t think we would get back together. The few times when I had seen Jarvis [Cocker] and it had come up in a conversation, he didn’t seem interested. I thought it wasn’t going to happen. But then he came around to the idea. I think everyone was into the idea. At first, the commitment was just for those fourteen or so UK shows in 2023. We thought that would be it. But then, obviously, once word gets out, people all over want you to go and play in different countries.
“We didn’t want to agree to doing any more until we played a few shows and got the vibe. But it was kind of amazing, the response. That encouraged us to do more, and then some new songs started to appear. And then it was, ‘Well, shall we make a record?’ We were more hesitant about committing to that.”
Even Cocker found himself unconvinced by a second reunion after the band’s 2011 to 2013 stretch had felt like the perfect farewell for Pulp. He said: “When Pulp got together that time, I had this idea that things had ended in a not-nice way, and I wanted it to have a happy ending.
“I thought the way to do that would be to play concerts, and we invited Russell Senior back and I just thought it would be like: we’re all friends, everything’s good, and then we’d all retire. And to be honest, that tour did seem to do that.” When it came to agreeing to more shows in 2023, Cocker told The Guardian: “I confessed my fear that people wouldn’t come, or that people weren’t that bothered, and why would they be?
“He [the promoter who offered Cocker the reunion slot] told me about a few times when he’d been to shows and a Pulp song had come on before a band went on, and everybody sang along. You know, I don’t go to shows any more. I’m an old bloke. All right, I hope you’re right, let’s do it.’ But I wanted to make sure that it would be a good thing for us to do as well.”
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