FEATURE:
Do You Remember the First Time?
The 2023 Reformation of Pulp: Revisiting Three Iconic Studio Albums
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IN exciting news last week…
PHOTO CREDIT: Christie Goodwin/Redferns
Jarvis Cocker announced that his band, Pulp, were hitting the road in 2023. Their debut album, It, came out in 1983. Maybe as a fortieth anniversary nod, I am not sure this reformation will lead to new material. That said, the sight of having Pulp back on stage and performing their classics is tantalising! This is how The Guardian reported news of a great reunion:
“Britpop legends Pulp are to reform and play gigs again in 2023, the band have announced.
After posting a cryptic caption to Instagram last week referencing their sixth album, This Is Hardcore, frontman Jarvis Cocker confirmed the reunion during a Guardian Live event on Monday night.
“Next year Pulp are going to play some concerts!” he said, to huge cheers from the audience.
Speaking to BBC Radio Sheffield on Tuesday, drummer Nick Banks – who confirmed the reunion was “a couple of months” into the planning stage – said the band had a list of “potential” dates and venues but that nothing was confirmed as yet.
He also posted about the reunion on Twitter, asking fans to “stay calm” and hug their Pulp records.
This isn’t the Sheffield band’s first reunion. After splitting in 2002, after the release of seventh album, We Love Life, the five-piece reunited in 2011 for a series of festival dates.
While new music was rumoured nothing emerged, with Cocker telling Q magazine the band were “cruising off into the sunset”. They split again in 2013”.
In order to celebrate news that a hugely important band are coming back to the stage, I am highlighting three of their albums that have stood the test of the time and are iconic. The band’s seventh studio album, We Love Life, was released in 2001. Although things are still in the planning stage, a 2023 Pulp series of gigs would be just what we need. It seems a long shot that we will get an eighth Pulp studio album, but you never know…
WHAT comes next.
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His 'n' Hers
Release Date: 18th April, 1994
Producer: Ed Buller
Label: Island
U.K. Chart Position: 9
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/pulp/his-n-hers-8d371b33-105d-406f-a2ba-61e0f9ce0b18
Key Cuts: Lipgloss/Have You Seen Her Lately?/Do You Remember the First Time?
Standout Track: Babies
Review:
“Pulp had been kicking around since 1981, but for all intents and purposes, their 1994 major-label debut, His 'n' Hers is their de facto debut: the album that established their musical and lyrical obsessions and, in turn, the album where the world at large became acquainted with their glassy, tightly wound synth pop and lead singer Jarvis Cocker's impeccably barbed wit. This was a sound that was carefully thought out, pieced together from old glam and post-punk records, assembled in so it had the immediacy (and hooks) of pop balanced by an artful obsession with moody, dark textures. It was a sound that perfectly fit the subject at hand: it was filled with contradictions -- it was sensual yet intellectual, cheap yet sophisticated, retro yet modern -- with each seeming paradox giving the music weight instead of weighing it down. Given Pulp's predilection for crawling mood pieces -- such effective set pieces as the tense "Acrylic Afternoons," or the closing "David's Last Summer" -- and their studied detachment, it might easy to over-intellectualize the band, particularly in these early days before they reached stardom, but for all of the chilliness of the old analog keyboards and the conscious geek stance of Cocker, this isn't music that aims for the head: its target is the gut and groin, and His 'n' Hers has an immediacy that's apparent as soon as "Joyriders" kicks the album into gear with its crashing guitars. It establishes Pulp not just as a pop band that will rock; it establishes an air of menace that hangs over this album like a talisman. As joyous as certain elements of the music are -- and there isn't just joy but transcendence here, on the fuzz guitars that power the chorus of "Lipgloss," or the dramatic release at the climax of "Babies" -- this isn't light, fizzy music, no matter how the album glistens on its waves of cold synths and echoed guitars, no matter how much sex drives the music here. Cocker doesn't tell tales of conquests: he tells tales of sexual obsession and betrayal, where the seemingly nostalgic question "Do You Remember the First Time?" is answered with the reply, "I can't remember a worst time." On earlier Pulp albums he explored similar stories of alienation, but on His 'n' Hers everything clicks: his lyrics are scalpel sharp, whether he's essaying pathos, passion, or wit, and his band -- driven by the rock-solid drummer Nick Banks and bassist Steve Mackey, along with the arty stylings of keyboardist Candida Doyle and violinist/guitarist Russell Senior -- gives this muscle and blood beneath its stylish exterior. The years etching out Joy Division-inspired goth twaddle in the mid-'80s pay off on the tense, dramatic epics that punctuate the glammy pop of the singles "Lipgloss," "Babies," and "Do You Remember the First Time?" And those years of struggle pay off in other ways too, particularly in Cocker's carefully rendered observations of life on the fringes of Sheffield, where desperation, sex, and crime are always just a kiss away, and Pulp vividly evokes this world with a startling lack of romanticism but an appropriate amount of drama and a surplus of flair. It's that sense of style coupled with their gut-level immediacy that gives His 'n' Hers its lasting power: this was Pulp's shot at the big time and they followed through with a record that so perfectly captured what they were and what they wanted to be, it retains its immediacy years later” – AllMusic
Different Class
Release Date: 30th October, 1995
Producer: Chris Thomas
Label: Island
U.K. Chart Position: 1
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/pulp/different-class-bd7678dd-9056-4be3-914d-6ed5cd083bf7
Key Cuts: Mis-Shapes/Common People/Sorted for E’s & Wizz
Standout Track: Disco 2000
Review:
“Class is far from the only theme bubbling away in this album, though. At least half the songs continue the love ‘n’ sex preoccupations of His ‘N’ Hers, tinged sometimes with the yearning nostalgia of earlier songs like “Babies.” The treatment on Different Class ranges from saucy (“Underwear”) to seedy (“Pencil Skirt,” the hoarsely panting confessional of a creepy lech who preys on his friend’s fiancé) to the sombre (“Live Bed Show” imagines the desolation of a bed that is not seeing any amorous action). “Something’s Changed,” conversely, is a straightforwardly romantic and gorgeously touching song about the unknown and unknowable turning points in anyone’s life: those trivial-on-the-surface decisions (to go out or stay in tonight, this pub or that club) that led to meetings and sometimes momentous transformations. Falling somewhere in between sublime and sordid, the epic “F.E.E.L.I.N.G. C.A.L.L.E.D. L.O.V.E” exalts romance as a messy interruption in business-as-usual: “it’s not convenient...it doesn’t fit my plans,” gasps Cocker, hilariously characterizing Desire as “like some small animal that only comes out at night.”
Sex and class converge in “I Spy”—a grandiose fantasy of Cocker as social saboteur whose covert (to the point of being unnoticed, perhaps existing only in his own head) campaign against the ruling classes involves literally sleeping with the enemy. “It’s not a case of woman v. man/It’s more a case of haves against haven’ts,” he offers, by way of explanation for one of his recent raids (“I’ve been sleeping with your wife for the past 16 weeks... Drinking your brandy/Messing up the bed that you chose together”). Looking back at Different Class many years later, Cocker recalled that in those days he thought “I was actually working undercover, trying to observe the world, taking notes for future reference, secretly subverting society.”
“I Spy” is probably the only song on Different Class that requires annotation, and even then, only barely. Crucial to Cocker’s democratic approach is that his lyrics are smart but accessible: He doesn’t go in for flowery or fussy wordplay, for poetically encrypted opacities posing as mystical depths. He belongs to that school of pop writing—which I find superior, by and large—where you say what you have to say as clearly and directly as possible. Not the lineage of Dylan/Costello/Stipe, in other words, but the tradition of Ray Davies, Ian Dury, the young Morrissey (as opposed to the willfully oblique later Morrissey).
Cocker’s songs on Different Class are such a rich text that you can go quite a long way into a review of the album before realizing you’ve barely mentioned how it sounds. Pulp aren’t an obviously innovative band, but on Different Class they almost never lapse into the overt retro-stylings of so many of their Britpop peers: Blur’s Kinks and new wave homages, Oasis’ flagrant Beatles-isms, Elastica’s Wire and Stranglers recycling. On Pulp’s ’90s records, there are usually a couple of examples of full-blown pastiche per album, like the Moroder-esque Eurodisco of “She’s a Lady” on His ‘N’ Hers. Here, “Disco 2000” bears an uncomfortable chorus resemblance to Laura Branigan’s “Gloria,” while “Live Bed Show” and “I Spy” hint at the Scott Walker admiration and aspiration that would blossom with We Love Life, which the venerable avant-balladeer produced.
Mostly though, it’s an original and ’90s-contemporary sound that Pulp work up on Different Class, characterized by a sort of shabby sumptuousness, a meagre maximalism. “Common People,” for instance, used all 48 studio tracks available, working in odd cheapo synth textures like the Stylophone and a last-minute overlay of acoustic guitar that, according to producer Chris Thomas, was “compressing so much, it just sunk it into the track.... glued the whole thing together. That was the whip on the horse that made it go” – Pitchfork
This Is Hardcore
Release Date: 30th March, 1998
Producer: Chris Thomas
Label: Island
U.K. Chart Position: 1
Buy: https://www.roughtrade.com/gb/pulp/this-is-hardcore
Key Cuts: Party Hard/This Is Hardcore/A Little Soul
Standout Track: Help the Aged
Review:
“1995’s Different Class was Pulp’s breakthrough but a tough act to follow. After a three-year wait Pulp finally delivered, This Is Hardcore. Mercifully, frontman, Jarvis Cocker didn’t resort to the cliché of bitching about his newfound fame and celebrity. Instead, we got something far darker and deeper. While some may see Hardcore as a decline from the dizzying heights of Class, to these ears it bookmarks the end of their classic period which began with 1994’s His ‘n’ Hers.
More than anything, Hardcore is about addiction. Addiction in its many forms. Addiction to drugs. Addiction to sex. Addiction to adoration. Addiction to misery. Addiction to revenge. While it deals with more personal and dour subject matter, Hardcore perversely remains as irresistibly accessible as the two pithy albums that preceded it. For all its doomy guitars, confessional self-loathing and paranoia, ‘The Fear’, is still a damn fine Pop song with one hell of a catchy chorus. “This is the sound of someone losing the plot,” Cocker insists but Hardcore is the sound of anything but. ‘The Fear’ is a bold, grandiose start to a dark ride but one that is not devoid of Cocker’s sharp wit. “Now you all know the words to song, it won’t be long before you’re singing along.”
‘The Fear’ is offset by the kitchen sink drama of, ‘Dishes’. Its narrator a mousy wallflower whose sense of self-deprecation is deceptive. “I am not Jesus, though I have the same initials.” Here, no miracles happen and the simple soul we’re greeted with becomes increasingly more sinister as the song progresses. While Cocker is never explicit, I can't shake the nagging feeling the person he’s addressing might just be trussed up in the attic. “Aren’t you happy just to be alive?” He asks. Suddenly, the claims of not being Jesus hint at megalomania that is absolutely bone-chilling.
‘Party Hard’ finds Cocker sparring with drug use, wearing blood-stained kid gloves. Vocally, he's clearly channeling his hero, Scott Walker. Nor is Cocker’s tongue all that firmly in cheek with bon mots like, “I don’t need to hear your stories again, just get on the floor and show me what you’re made of.” Musically, it bears warped traces of the last days of disco. And then, there’s Cocker’s asides, muttered under the influence of robotic vocal effects.
‘Help The Aged’ deftly mixes satire and genuine compassion. In terms of single cuts, it’s one of Hardcore’s finest offerings. “You can see where you’re heading and it’s such a lonely place oh, in meantime we try to forget nothing lasts forever.” Beneath any claims of altruism for the elderly, lies a jealous, aging lothario bitterly opining, “When did you realize its time to take another lover, baby?”
As for Hardcore’s title track, it manages to combine Burt Bacharach pastiche and chilling, cinematic strings. “I want to make a movie, let’s star in it together, don’t make a move until I say action.” Suddenly the mad swirl of cocaine and champagne fall like a curtain, revealing a bleak tenement world of isolation and obsession. “What exactly do you do for an encore? Cos’ this hardcore,” Cocker croons sarcastically.
In reply, Cocker strips things down to a battered acoustic guitar for the start of, ‘TV Movie’. “Without you, my life has become a hangover without end,” he confesses, “A TV movie with no story or sex”. While one would suspect a dreary drama to follow, ‘TV Movie’ is irresistible Pop. In spite of being a rather sordid confessional of self-inflicted heartbreak and loss.
‘A Little Soul’ settles on the therapist’s couch for a session about parental abandonment. Suddenly a narrative begins to reveal itself. If what preceded is the rise and fall of addiction, here are the first steps of recovery. When Cocker finally tracks down the father who left, he's met with, “I got no wisdom that I want to pass on, just don’t hang round here, no, I’m telling you son, you don’t want to know me.” The party is indeed over. Time to bend down and pick up the pieces.
Just when you think Hardcore is going to be a bum trip, ‘I’m A Man’ jogs in to “Wonder what it takes to be a man.” A song that brings XTC to mind at their most infectious. It’s the album’s most buoyant and bittersweet moment.
If there’s one misstep on Hardcore it’s that the eight-plus- minute, ‘Seductive Barry’ overstays its welcome. If it’s a song about over-indulgence, it isn’t shy about imbibing. One of Hardcore’s B-sides (‘Cocaine Socialism’ or ‘Like A Friend’) would have made for a more concise album. It’s the one track I skip over. At the very least, it wastes some time before we’re hit with the album’s soaring, ‘Sylvia’. This is the power Pop anthem you’ve been waiting for. “Her beauty was her only crime,” Cocker laments.
‘Sylvia’ would have made for a magnificent send-off and yet Hardcore has two more parting shots. In ‘Glory Days’, if the present is slightly less than glorious, its at least stable. “If you want me, I’ll be sleeping in throughout these glory days,” Cocker quips. The credits roll, however, with the rousing, ‘The Day After The Revolution’. “No anger, no guilt, no sorrow, it sounds unlikely, I know, but tomorrow you’ll wake up to find your whole life changed, a revolution took place,” Cocker passionately bellows in parting. “The revolution was televised, now it’s over, bye bye” – Soundblab