Did anybody really think there wouldn’t be an encore? The Britpop-straddling Pulp of His ’n’ Hers (1994), Different Class (1995) and This is Hardcore (1998) was a phenomenon 15 years in the making, and their bowing out after 2001’s pastoral, Scott Walker-produced seventh album We Love Life felt woefully premature. A 2011 reunion produced a sole new single (2013’s lascivious future disco “After You”) but there was an innate crowd-pleasing impulse in the band that wouldn’t be so easily satiated. “I was born to perform, it’s a calling,” Jarvis Cocker declares early on More, Pulp’s first album in 24 years, breathing second life into their most recent comeback, “I exist to do this, shouting and pointing”. And to that a hearty “alriiiiight”.
As if out to trick naive reviewers into the fatal career bear pit known as “the Ronseal gag”, More initially appears to live up to its name. It draws from leftover songs and life experiences dating back to 1998 and continues precisely where their imperial phase left off. Opener and first single “Spike Island” – a co-write with Cocker’s one-time Relaxed Muscle cohort Jason Buckle, who was there – is as Pulp as it gets. A major event in Nineties rock and dance culture, viewed from an intelligent outsider’s distance, “Spike Island” illuminates Cocker’s existential malaise, as outlined in breathy spoken-word asides between enthusiastic groove-outs. And if it acts as a pill-popping cousin to “Sorted For E’s and Whizz”, it could also be read as a document of the times: “I took a breather and decided not to ruin my life/ I was conforming to a cosmic design/ I was playing to type,” Cocker reminisces, concluding: “This time I’ll get it right”.
