Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Laurence Phelan

Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore? review – Jarvis Cocker’s wit and warmth upstage the hits

A singer performs with a microphone, legs apart, in front of screens showing his image
National treasure … Jarvis Cocker at the 02, London, in Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore? Photograph: MUBI

In 1978, in the classroom of a comprehensive school in Sheffield, a skinny, shortsighted 15-year-old wrote a mission statement in the back of an exercise book – a masterplan for reaching the top with the band he had recently formed with some classmates who, like him, weren’t picked first for sports.

In 2023, after a hiatus of a decade, his band Pulp started touring again, and last year played to 20,000 people at each of two nights at the O2 in London. This film features concert footage from those gigs in which a still lithe, still-got-it-at-60-odd Jarvis Cocker sings his hit art-pop anthems backed by most of the classic lineup and a 10-piece string section. And interspersed with the concert footage are autobiographical musings, nostalgic archive footage, interviews with Jarvis’s mum and gran, and Cocker narrating the story of how he got from there, almost half a century ago, to here.

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.