Pulp - A cut above

Some might be surprised to learn that one of the most durable and resilient British bands of the last twenty-five years is Pulp. Officially active (as we'll see) since 1980 (though truth be told, the valiant Cocker, the group's leader, had already started strumming away and putting together little home recordings back in 1978!), they have never, at least officially, split up, demonstrating over the course of their extremely long career a rare and decisive capacity to keep rising from the ashes and reinventing themselves. So much so that in 1994-1995 (after a full fifteen years of frustrating anonymity) they achieved success on a continental scale, coinciding precisely with the media explosion of the britpop phenomenon, to which Pulp ended up belonging almost by accident, being in some respects practically "contemporaries" of U2 and R.E.M.

Pulp formed and took their first steps in Sheffield, and it's precisely the artistic background of the "steel city" that provides the most defining musical elements for a proper critical understanding of Pulp's sound, a synth-pop that reached full maturity right on the threshold of the Nineties, built on the lessons of fundamental fellow citizens like Human League, Comsat Angels, Cabaret Voltaire, Heaven 17, Vice Versa (and their subsequent evolution into ABC). To this small but substantial galaxy (of which Pulp represent, in their own way, a natural evolution), we should add the equally decisive influence exerted by major Eighties pop figures such as Soft Cell, Tears For Fears, Roxy Music, Style Council, Devo, Duran Duran, Modern English, Visage, and the hedonistic Bowie of "Let's Dance" and its immediate surroundings.

But let's take things in order. As mentioned, it all begins in Sheffield at the initiative of Jarvis Cocker, a gangly, anorexic, bespectacled kid in love with Serge Gainsbourg and Scott Walker, occupying that improbable point where Mick Jagger, Woody Allen, Oscar Wilde and Adriano Celentano manage, for a few fleeting instants, to coincide and perhaps even meet (with all the disastrous and hilarious consequences that might follow...).

The name chosen to start out with is Arabicus Pulp, soon shortened to the more manageable and fitting Pulp, and the collective also includes Philip Thompson and Jimmy Sellars, soon to be joined by the essential Russell Senior (who had reviewed a Pulp gig in a fanzine), Jamie Pinback and Wayne Furniss (guitar and violin, bass and drums, respectively). In 1980 they appear on a compilation gathering South Yorkshire bands, titled "Bouquet Of Steele", and that same year sees their first gig at the Rotherham Arts Centre, followed in 1981 by the release of a small demo that ends up in the hands of that old fox John Peel, who — proof of his infallible instinct — invites the band to London for a session (this precious and moving document has recently become available again thanks to Island's release of Pulp's John Peel Sessions).

Pulp's name begins to circulate in alternative music circles, and one of the band's tracks, "What Do You Say", ends up in 1982 on the compilation "Your Secret's Safe With Us". Meanwhile a deal arrives with Red Rhino, which in April 1983 releases Pulp's first album, It, which goes completely unnoticed and has to wait until 1994, and a changed cultural climate, to get the reissue needed to confirm its existence in some way. Two things are surprising on revisiting the eight songs of this very strange debut. The first is that the compositions are anything but harmless or immature, as one might reasonably assume (all the band members were, after all, very young at the time of recording). The second is that this It contains, in embryonic form, all or most of the artistic path that would come to define Pulp's story within just a few years, and listening to it (even briefly) is highly recommended as a result. It opens with the clear, nostalgic cry of some seagulls, followed by the pairing of "My Lighthouse" and "Wishful Thinking", which layers the slow, regular strum of benevolent Byrds-like guitars over a sugary melodicism steeped in Beatles-esque echoes, followed in turn by ecstatic choirs and flutes that recall certain pastoral suggestions in the style of Fairport Convention or Pentangle.

What's most striking is Cocker's voice, already perfectly formed and recognisable, incredibly intense and close to the best of Robert Smith. A touch more syrupy is "Jocking Aside", which doesn't stray too far from the previous tracks, buoyed by a proudly Victorian cadence, while one could happily get lost among the bright, fragrant flowers of "Boats And Trains", as subtle and inessential as a worn wallpaper with a hypnotic, regular pattern. "Blue Girls" carries on in this languid, cracked seminar on youth, caressed by thin gusts of flute and half-mumbled piano notes that scatter in the air like dry leaves, while in the background the chatter of schoolgirls drifts in and out like a tide, before a literary, decadent gunshot at the end of the track. "Love Love" is as anonymous as a Sunday at the funfair it tries to depict with its clarinet and brass, "In Many Ways" truly has the sound of an adolescence lost forever, as does the following "Looking For Life", which lays another small provincial shrine to the lost joys of puberty over its ancient, drowsy organ. And so ends this record, leaving the suspicion that, with a bit more promotional attention and a touch of prosaic luck, Pulp could have become the Smiths before the Smiths (who, incidentally, released their own debut album that very same year).

The band's line-up is extremely unstable during this period, with numerous departures as well as new arrivals, among which the decisive addition of keyboardist Candida Doyle should be noted — a friend of guitarist Russell Senior and sister of Magnus Doyle (the band's drummer for a time) — which paves the way for a deal with Fire Records, who in May 1987 release the second album, Freaks, preceded in January of that same year by the single "They Suffocate At Night", both soon forgotten. During the recording of this controversial album, in the summer of 1986, an increasingly frustrated and disillusioned Cocker, worn down by persistent failure, falls from a window (apparently while trying to impress a girl) and is confined to a wheelchair for a long period.

Pulp's second album immediately takes on a more theatrical, art-rock tone compared to its ethereal predecessor, and ends up coming across as overly pretentious and blatantly self-indulgent. Years later, Cocker himself would refer to this record in extremely harsh terms, stating that it probably deserved the total indifference and lack of popularity it received. "Fairground" mixes avant-garde theatre with a thick Grand Guignol, Marinetti-esque cackle, and sounds like a leftover scrap from some Zappa-esque hallucination. The following "I Want You" instead relies on an intimate, confidential crooning style, blossoming into a smooth, soft-soul chorus that recalls the more intimate atmospheres of It, poised between Marvin Gaye and George Harrison. "Being Followed Home" confirms this album's general tendency to build detailed, shifting sonic landscapes over which Cocker's peremptory, detached narration unfolds from a bird's-eye view, though it leads the songs toward excessive fragmentation, within a solemn, mechanically structured ritual that in certain moments almost brings to mind the Fall, as demonstrated by the following "Master Of The Universe", the embarrassing second single.

"Life Must Be So Wonderful" struggles to regain some ground, but sinks back once more into the sticky gloom of a flat, brooding soliloquy. Better luck befalls the following "There's No Emotion", though here too there's a strong temptation to stand before the fogged-up mirror of one's own loneliness and play the part of Sinatra, or of a listless, shuffling Elvis at the end of his career. Cocker translates one of the least inspired, least hopeful periods of his whole life into a musical grain that is deliberately arid and pervaded by a positively corpse-like pallor.

The ghostly "Anorexic Beauty" barely exists at all, and in its skeletal poverty of invention it borders on self-harm. The same goes for the orchestral bombast of "The Never Ending Story", in which Cocker crowns himself king of his own nothingness, with a perverse smirk and a ferocious streak of grotesque farce. "Don't You Know" is another harmless pop knick-knack, unobtrusive and utterly invisible, as is the closing "They Suffocate At Night", which lingers on a bland, torpid melody fit for a French film steeped in vapid sentimentalism, right as the Empire collapses and shatters into a thousand pieces.

The album is followed by an ill-fated tour around England, marked by film projections, dances and assorted performances, loosely inspired by Warhol and co.'s Exploding Plastic Inevitable and by the Fugs' readings. Cocker moves to London to study film, and it's in the capital that he meets bassist Steve Mackey, who together with drummer Nick Banks (who had joined shortly before) gives the line-up a stable shape, alongside the already-mentioned Russell Senior and Candida Doyle, injecting the Pulp project with fresh stimulus and precious new life.

The new album, Separations, has already been ready for some time, but Fire delays its release by almost two years and only puts out the single "My Legendary Girlfriend" in September 1990 (NME's single of the week, later reissued in 1992), followed in August 1991 by "Countdown", coinciding with Pulp's appearance at a festival organised by Les Inrockuptibles in France.

Separations finally sees the light of day in July 1992, but by then Pulp have already cut ties with their old label and founded their own, Gift, which releases, alongside the opening track "O.U. (Gone Gone)", two singles that begin drawing public attention to the band's music: "Babies" (October '92, later included on the subsequent His 'n' Hers, through which it would achieve great fame) and "Razzmatazz" (February '93).

With Separations, Pulp begin to settle into that whistling, carefree synth-pop style, halfway between Pet Shop Boys and ABBA, which would become a strongly defining trait of their future output, fitting into that dense web of fundamental influences discussed in the introductory remarks. This doesn't change the fact that Separations remains essentially a transitional work, a kind of disordered, bustling workshop or incubator in which Pulp hone their tools and their songwriting, beginning to sketch out the first laboured drafts of a finally original artistic voice.

It ranges from the puffing pop of the little toy-train tune "Love Is Blind", somewhere between Human League and ABC, confirmed by the following "Don't You Want Any More", built on a long-distance dialogue between intermittent keyboards and a supple violin, all the way to the Hollywood-style sunsets of the weary "She's Dead" and the frantic violin (played by Russell Senior) of "Separations", the most cinematic in construction, which after a hazily orchestral overture opens out into a lopsided, stammering synthetic samba. The track is interesting, despite its mediocrity, as it anticipates a certain interest in melodrama and musical theatre (already partly present, as noted, on Freaks), which would play a central role in Pulp's later output, especially on the album This Is Hardcore.

For the rest, the overall impression is that of a private correspondence with Eighties pop, exploring all the expressive possibilities and formal vicissitudes of that music, moving from Soft Cell to the Psychedelic Furs, in a rapid survey of every possible stylistic stance and strategy, stringing together plasticky, danceable little marches like "Countdown" (truly a regurgitation of old carcasses gnawed away by the maelstrom of the Eighties) or "My Legendary Girlfriend", another chipped relic of electro-pop, artificially built through a refined exercise in encyclopaedic mimicry (we mustn't forget, after all, that this is 1992, and certain kinds of music had already long since become museum pieces of memory).

This is how Pulp build the small mausoleum of a now-defunct musical dynasty, displaying an unrewarding but unfailingly precise natural predisposition to anachronism, almost always missing by a hair's breadth the ebb and flow of fashions and public musical taste, and almost always ending up systematically ignored as a result. But in 1993 something decisive happens. Suede's self-titled debut album is a smash hit on the charts, shaking up the stagnant English music industry and paving the way for the imminent arrival of britpop. Pulp, somehow, even manage to land a deal with major label Island, sealed by the release of their last vinyl recordings in the compilation Pulp Intro: The Gift Recordings and by the release of the single "Lipgloss", the band's first true masterpiece (alongside the already-mentioned "Babies"), which enters England's singles Top 50.

Things are changing fast, and the time is ripe for the release of the new album, His 'n' Hers, out in April 1994, preceded in March by the irresistible single "Do You Remember The First Time?" (accompanied by a memorable short film), and immediately followed in May by the reissue of "Babies", which had already been circulating for a couple of years. The old label Fire strikes back, trying to cash in on the band's growing success, with the reissue of It and the release of the old-material compilation Master Of The Universe, further complicating an already rather tangled and fragmentary discography.

According to some, His 'n' Hers represents the qualitative peak of Cocker's band, but much of this record's merit tends to be overshadowed by the following year's multi-award-winning Different Class. The fact remains that His 'n' Hers marks a fundamental turning point in Pulp's output, bringing to fruition and full maturity the aesthetic ambitions of that calibrated, synthetic pop which had taken its first timid steps on Separations. Not to mention the undeniable quality and inventiveness of many of the songs included on this record, which attest to a moment of unrepeatable grace in Cocker and co.'s songwriting.

You can start wherever you like: from the mood swings of the lunatic "Joyriders", which projects onto a Bowie-esque stage the gestural narrative of a voice that seems to reproduce, in its acrobatic contortions, Cocker's stylish, bouncy moves on stage, or equally from "She's A Lady", with its sobbing falsettos and its theatre of synthetic puppets built on deconstructed scraps of Human League and small mechanical clockwork courtesy of Ultravox. Not to mention the embroidered calligraphy of "Happy Endings", which compresses Serge Gainsbourg and the pink pages of some provincial schoolgirl's diary into a fragrant bouquet of polychrome, springtime pop.

But the real royal flush comes from the trio of singles: "Babies" is a crossing of oblique guitar trajectories like aircraft trails in a clear sky, and the chorus fills its lungs and its gaze with fragrant melodies, in an overall atmosphere of exhilaration and sensory opening-up. "Lipgloss" has a more resolute stride, which then opens out onto a boundless melody, while the guitar scrawls crazed doodles and Cocker totters like a tightrope walker along an extremely thin vocal line, scattering confetti of Pet Shop Boys and Style Council in every direction. It's almost a resurrection, or an impossible second youth, and "Do You Remember The First Time?" only confirms it. "Pink Glove" (one of the album's best compositions) comes close to new romantic territory, with its millimetre-precise keyboard syllogisms and vocal sighs that come together into a melodic tapestry of ecstatic beauty. "Acrylic Afternoons" also has a well-balanced design, unrolling its red carpet of palpitations and broken loves over neatly turned synth progressions.

With "Have You Seen Her Lately?" one begins to suspect that Pulp's ultimate aim is almost to etch onto the bark of their shapely pop a sort of provincial, working-class "La Boum", through the folds of an eternal, aching coming-of-age novel. It's hard to find any real weak points, except perhaps an excessive aesthetic subservience to the formal dictates of synth-pop, which leads the group to write somewhat blurrier or more lilting tracks like "Someone Like The Moon" or "David's Last Summer" (passable, in any case).

Things start turning unexpectedly well. In autumn, Pulp support Blur on a tour of the US. But the real commercial explosion comes in May 1995, with the new, now-historic single "Common People" debuting straight at number 2 on the charts. At the last minute, Pulp replace the Stone Roses as headliners at Glastonbury, and the performance borders on triumph. The double A-side "Mis-Shapes/Sorted For E's & Wizz" (which would stir up no small controversy - especially from the "Daily Mirror" - over its knowing references to drugs) precedes by a month, in September, the release of the new album Different Class, which immediately settles in at number one on the charts. The following singles repeat the success: "Disco 2000" (November 1995) and "Something Changed" (March 1996). Mark Webber, head of Pulp's official fan club, joins the band as a full-time keyboardist and guitarist, and in October the band sets off on tour across Scandinavia, Europe and Japan.

But the decisive event is another one: in early 1996, Jarvis climbs on stage at the Brit Awards during a performance by Michael Jackson, putting his hands on his buttocks like a tacky, demented new Jim Morrison. The gesture, followed by a very brief spell in custody, gets huge media coverage, and Jarvis Cocker quickly becomes an extremely popular figure in Britain, a sort of national hero.

After ten years of total indifference, thanks to Different Class Pulp move from the pages of the NME to the encyclopaedias of British pop history (which, deep down, is exactly what they'd always wanted), and their gigs set packed arenas ablaze. There isn't actually much more to say about Different Class. It's a work that has by now entered British pop's collective imagination, almost on a par with the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper or the Smiths' dead queen, and it was destined to influence countless English bands (and beyond) in the years to come.

Turning to the songs on the record, it's worth remembering that they were written and recorded close on the heels of the previous His 'n' Hers, and so they tend to align with the same quality standards, falling under the same umbrella of by-now well-established pop reference points.

What Different Class perhaps has extra are, essentially, two unrepeatable songs: "Common People" and "Disco 2000". Two pop postcards sent straight from the beating heart of the Nineties, songs that could only have been written in the Nineties and which still today convey the full sense of creative madness, sexual euphoria and unstoppable hedonism that pervaded those years, when Kurt Cobain's blood was still warm and rock was slowly dying only to be resurrected under the prefix "post", and England, despite everything, seemed to have turned into the garage-band California of the Sixties - the only difference being that even the most insignificant band had a more than concrete chance of becoming famous and selling a million records (without necessarily having written one yet, as happened to the now-forgotten Menswear).

"Common People" is like a huge snowball starting to slide down slippery surfaces of synthesizers, getting thicker and faster with every turn, dragging into its whirling descent Soft Cell, Human League, ABC, Bowie, before smashing onto the hard concrete of a secretly frustrated, and perhaps already subtly disillusioned, England.

"Disco 2000" (which, in a curious and mischievously amusing twist of fate, lifts the decisive guitar riff from Umberto Tozzi's "Gloria", though no lawsuits followed) spins the manic top of its chorus across the floor of a loose, danceable glam-pop, while Cocker pops the coloured pills of his "Oh Yeah!"s as if there were not the slightest temporal or emotional distance between him and Mick Jagger.

The rest of the record follows the same wavelength and is never less than good. "Mis-Shapes" sounds like a miniaturized pop version of the Velvet Underground's "Heroin", with its accelerated pulse spilling over into a breathless chorus, caressed by icy cosmic radiation. "Pencil Skirt", on the other hand, is a bland soul number delivered in a hushed tone, the kind the band had already written in the past and would keep writing in the future, a bit too whispery and insubstantial. Decidedly better is the refined voyeuristic exercise of "I Spy", a musical mini-opera or fable built on flickering synth-and-strings set design that perhaps sums up the entire meaning of Different Class, peering through the keyhole at all the hidden contradictions of a country as small and insignificant as a doll's house (after all, Cocker once said that his favourite pastime is watching people without being seen).

Still, there's refreshment to be had in the cool, pop fragrances Costello-style of "Something Changed" and "Live Bed Show" (lovely in its inexorable descending line), or in the cramped melodies of "Underwear", which then stretch out in a chorus cut through by the clear light of a warm, embroidering guitar. "Sorted For Es & Wizz" is another toy of dreamy, crumbling synth-pop, as is the following, more angular "Feeling Called Love", poised between noisy kraut and dazed new wave, just before unleashing a melodic sequence worthy of Duran Duran, not exactly irresistible.

"Monday Morning" and "Bar Italy" close the circle: the first sketches an almost rubbery, swaying ska, while the second is a pleasant, well-crafted pop tune, though not especially gripping, in the vein of "Underwear", drawing a lukewarm, nostalgic curtain over Roman holidays and the yellow-tinged loves of Pulp and their "Different Class".

The album wins the Mercury Music Prize, and Pulp donate the proceeds to charity. A year of silence follows, marked by the departure of Russell Senior, who embarks on solo projects (including the glam band Venini). The new, controversial album, titled This Is Hardcore, comes out alongside the title single in March 1998, though the single "Help The Aged" had already been released back in October of the previous year. The singles "A Little Soul", in June, and "Party Hard", in September, would follow. Partly riding on the still-fresh memory of Different Class, the album gets a good reception. Meanwhile, Cocker works on lyrics for the comeback of crooner Tony Christie and makes three documentaries for Channel Four on the artistic avant-gardes of the early twentieth century.

What struck people most at the time this album came out was undoubtedly the single "This Is Hardcore", which marks a rather sharp, clean break from the carefree spirit of some of the band's earlier work. The track (almost seven minutes long, a sort of murky, bloodied "Bohemian Rhapsody") can be considered one of the group's masterpieces (the accompanying video was equally stunning), and it crowns one of the most interesting stylistic subplots running through Pulp's career, begun on the first album with "Blue Girls", continued with "Being Followed Home" and "She's Dead", and carried through to "I Spy". Cocker manages to fuse melodrama, musical theatre, opera and cinema into a monumental song with a majestically Hitchcockian structure, divided into three fundamental movements (almost following the classic Aristotelian arc of drama), which trace a precise, gradual emotional progression before converging on a rarefied, stretched-out chorus, like the reveal of the culprit in a noir novel — which, in this case, is really almost a confession of self-blame, as befits any respectable noir. It all unfolds gradually, following the relentless movements of a demystifying gaze that surgically cuts into the sickness of a world that is ever more superficially hollow and solipsistic. And it's precisely disillusionment, disenchantment, and perhaps mourning that one must speak of in relation to this album, decisively and intrinsically "black", almost a requiem or a funeral mass for all the almost D'Annunzian dreams and aspirations (including the great Labour gamble) of the preceding years, wrapping, in the dense half-light of its towering naves like some imposing Gothic cathedral, the last lingering traces of the mild hedonism tied to the now-dormant Britpop scene (in this light it would be worth investigating the web of connections and the dense, unconscious dialogue between this album and Suede's Suede "Dog Man Star", released in 1994).

Musically, the album shifts toward Leonard Cohen, Tindersticks, Nick Cave, and the most decadent, "Thin White Duke"-era Bowie. In this sense, the hypnotic "Party Hard" is a sort of skeletal carcass of that "Disco 2000" everyone once queued up to get into, now showing its deserted, crumbling profile, while "A Little Soul" warms itself in the dim light of a domestic, submissive folk-pop that seems almost afraid of being found by the world. "Help The Aged" is a supremely refined pop song, right up there with Pulp's best compositions, but its chorus is mirrored in the stagnant waters of a subtle, silent unease that spreads through memory and perception like a leaden black stain or a widening hole of elusive psychedelia.

The rest of the album isn't always on the same level, and here and there clear signs of fatigue and diminished clarity emerge (partly due to the heavy drug use the band had slowly slipped into). That said, This Is Hardcore remains to this day the Pulp album most praised by critics, who often tend to prefer it to the two previous records because of its greater thematic complexity and the compositional richness of some of its tracks. Still, one can't credit this record with achieving an expressive maturity that had, after all, already been fully reached by the time of His 'n' Hers; if anything, what we're faced with here is a significant, and in some ways irreversible, broadening of perspective. The fact remains that "The Fear" falls only slightly short of "This Is Hardcore", wandering among the ruins of a now-decayed pop splendour before fixing its gaze on the deep, smudged-lipstick eye sockets of a chorus that almost recalls Queen. Less convincing, and perhaps repetitive (in an album that already contains "A Little Soul"), are the finely shaded crooning of "Dishes" and the pencil-thin Scott Walker impression of the whistling "Tv Movie", with Cocker not quite in top vocal form.

"I'm A Man" empties onto a table of sustained guitars all the melodies still jingling in its pockets, but it only scrapes together a few loose coins from "Different Class". More interesting is the bubbling recital of "Seductive Barry", steeped in dark Depeche Mode moods (it almost feels like the clock is turning back to the days of Freaks), and equally good is the bittersweet melodic palette of "Sylvia", about as Pulp as Pulp can get. More anonymous are "Glory Days" (here too, the impression of a "Common People" wrinkled by deep lines and clumsy movements grows stronger with every listen) and the breathless glam of "The Day After The Revolution", which thrashes about on the stage of a show that's already over and abandoned (yet still refuses to accept it's finished).

It would take a full three years before Pulp's new album, We Love Life, finally arrived, released in 2001 and produced by none other than Scott Walker, the unreachable idol of a still-young Cocker. Although it introduces some significant stylistic and formal innovations into the by-now dense fabric of Pulp's music, the album receives little attention from either the public or critics, and to some extent it foreshadows the band's temporary cessation of official activity: in 2002 they would release a summary Hits compilation (its only new track being the decent "Last Day Of The Miner's Strike"), actually rather thin and partial (though a decent way to approach the band's catalogue), which would reach a less-than-flattering seventieth place in the charts, marking perhaps the peak of a truly relentless decline in popularity.

In 2006, Island very fittingly reissued (remastered and expanded with unreleased tracks and outtakes) the now-historic and widely celebrated trilogy of His 'n' Hers, Different Class, and This Is Hardcore, and around the same time put out a double collection of Peel Sessions, already mentioned above — all initiatives that, in a small way, reignited lively critical debate and renewed interest in the band. So what of We Love Life? Certainly not a masterpiece or a landmark record, but just as certainly not an uninspired enough work to justify such an abrupt halt to the band's activity. In its own way, We Love Life seals Pulp's journey with a sense of circularity, bringing the group back, in its final destination, to the calm, whispering shores of their debut, It — not to mention the far-from-coincidental production by Scott Walker, the man from whom, perhaps, the entire human and musical story of Pulp had originally taken its cue.

The album opens with the solemn, luminous ceremony of "Weeds", a nature poem that raises its votive temple to a pop sound with Beatlesque echoes, extraordinarily forceful too thanks to guitars that dance around the fire of a rejuvenated Cocker's voice. The song's second movement advances through new age and digital, synthetic psychedelia (very Pink Floyd, very Tangerine Dream), telepathically connecting to the ancestral voice of the Earth through a simply Dionysian Cocker, who unleashes his full visionary potential, narrating the great novel of the universe with shamanic fervour.

"The Night Minnie Timperly Died" adds another relic to the now-sizeable collection of Pulp-branded pop memorabilia, while "The Trees" reaffirms the band's wish to make peace, in a pantheistic embrace, with a nature that's anything but hostile: the track has a pleasant swinging gait and branches out into a fresh, reassuring chorus, like the stirring boughs of the trees whose sovereign bliss it sings of. More than a song, "Wickerman" is a tormented, declamatory high noon, sounding almost like Johnny Cash as reinterpreted by Ray Davies. The track does, however, get carried away by rather overindulgent flourishes of self-satisfied theatricality, especially in its second half, steeped in Morricone-esque western epic (note the towering, steep orchestral walls bordering on the Spectorian). "I Love Life", very baroque but deeply indecisive, never settles on a clear melodic direction, getting lost in a game of mirrors and refractions, even if the arrangements are richly woven and finely detailed; "Bad Cover Version", almost a self-parody, lives up to its title with a deliberately bland, flavourless pop performance, one whose healing powers the band itself no longer believes in, yet which one ultimately succumbs to all the same. Here too, note the sparkling, flawless production, likely thanks to maestro Walker.

"The Birds In Your Garden" doesn't have much to say for itself beyond its soft cascades of sugary dream-pop cream, while the following "Bob Lind (The Only Way Is Down)" takes the mind back to the island of youthful innocence that was It, with twilit, Byrds-like guitars weaving the patient fabric of memory. "Roadkill" dips a weary hand into the flowing waters of a modest folk stream, moving at a slow pace (perhaps too slow, but it's worth the patience), while the closing "Sunrise" returns to the thunderous opening of "Weeds" with a burst of pure, incorporeal light that takes centre stage in its dawn-lit chorus, pointing toward an unspeakable, unsatisfied tension that asks only to pause in silence and keep listening, along the edges of what music still cannot say.

More than a farewell, this We Love Life ultimately sounds like an open-ended, provisional goodbye that will, one hopes, eventually find a fitting follow-up. But the story certainly doesn't end here. It doesn't end because "Jarvis" (as he now likes to affectedly sign himself) has by now become a permanent fixture of that exclusive aristocracy of English songwriters from whom every name that matters begs the favour of a song. Jarvis thus moves into self-imposed exile in Paris with wife and children, writing songs, whenever he feels like it, for Jane Birkin, Charlotte Gainsbourg or Air (alongside friend/rival Neil Hannon of Divine Comedy), or indulging in yawn-inducing, off-the-cuff pastimes, such as contributing to the soundtracks of "Harry Potter" or "Pirates of the Caribbean", not to mention dabbling in the blasphemy-laced electroclash of the Relaxed Muscle project, alongside his new, stylish partner in crime Richard Hawley, hidden behind the mask of the pseudonym Warren Spooner.

But the most significant thing is the album released under the name Jarvis, which hits shops in 2006. More than an album, it's a game of solitaire, and every card seems to deal out a furtive glimpse of the Pulp that once was. The single "Don't Let Him Waste Your Time" is a cheerful little march packed with small orchestral crescendos. Also enjoyable are the chiming glam of "Black Magic" (featuring a sample of "Crimson And Clover" by Tommy James and the Shondells) and the warm, crisp melody of "Heavy Weather", which carries a deep, almost Springsteen-esque breath.

But the most touching episodes are also the most intimate and personal ones: "Baby's Coming Back To Me" crawls forward on light xylophone traces, filled with genuine wonder like a child taking possession of the world; "From A To I" harks back to the slow, steady rhythm of the tree-lined avenues of "The Trees" (from We Love Life) and lets itself be lulled by a warm breeze blowing straight out of the Sixties, much like the piano-led "I Will Kill Again". "Fat Children", with its caustic curses, sets the mood ablaze with a ramshackle, clattering rock sound, which is then soothed in the thick, solemn smoke-rings of "Disney Time".

"Tonite" suffers a little from a chorus that's too thin, confirming the overall impression (reinforced by the rest of the tracks, including the hit single – here a ghost track – "Running The World") of a songwriter now fully mature and in complete command of his unmistakable craft, who rather than pushing forward the imposing work left unfinished chooses instead to pick a few scattered flowers that have grown for no particular reason in the tiny garden of his own imagination, left free to follow its shifting, fickle moods.

In 2009 the new album, Further Complications, comes out, produced by a curious twist of fate by Steve Albini (!?), and it seems to confirm the "undecidability" of one of the last untameable fantasists of British pop music.

A two-faced work, poised between crude buffoonery and an exercise in subtle inventive omnipotence, a colossal dance and a thunderous celebration of a superior storytelling intelligence. Everyone can piece together the scattered fragments following whichever path they prefer: from the mellifluous, glittery disco-soul of the dazzling "You're In My Eyes (Discosong)" to the bouncy glam of "Angela", passing through the futuristic, instrumental new wave of "Pilchard" and the garage-Beatlesque whims of "Caucasian Blues". And while "Fuckingsong" flirts with a lascivious hypothesis of hard-rock as priapic as its title (literally), "I Never Said I Was Deep" tries to explain how depth is just a great linguistic misunderstanding, or perhaps a pleasant romantic illusion, settling into languid swing-jazz scenery and scraps of homespun musical theatre, before the six-plus minutes of "Slush" let themselves be swallowed up in a blanket of vaguely shoegaze guitar haze and Gregorian-chant choirs.

A labyrinthine celebration of lies and the most unbridled mystification, in which everything can be anything, or nothing at all. And this too, it must be said, can often prove a pleasurable and decidedly instructive experience.

In 2017 Jarvis Cocker returns to the scene, but he's not alone. On "Room 29" he duets with Canadian pianist Chilly Gonzales in a sort of concept album dedicated to the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Los Angeles. Recorded in Paris after three years of research and translation into words and music, the sixteen tracks of "Room 29" bring together two worlds that are only seemingly distant. On one side, Gonzales's piano touches, accompanied only by the light orchestrations of the Kaiser Quartett that help conjure the atmosphere; on the other, Cocker's spoken word occasionally turns into singing, whenever the theatricality of the moment demands it (listen to the theatrical delivery of "Daddy, You're Not Watching Me"). The result is a picture painted with few but intense brushstrokes, as minimal as it is expressive — evocative, even. There are flashes of moving elegance ("Tearjerker") and old-world atmospheres that could come from the pen of Neil Hannon ("Clara"), but always treading lightly, as if not to break the spell of the moment. More extroverted are the arcs of "A Trick Of The Light" and "Belle Boy", miniature operettas that highlight Cocker's more histrionic side, with tones that slip skilfully between levity and drama.

In 2020 Cocker launches another project that literally takes his name: JARV IS… Jarvis Cocker. More Hamlet-like than a Shakespearean character, the Pulp frontman looks at himself in the mirror and tries to take stock. Despite the band he's assembled around him – Serafina Steer (harp, keyboards, vocals), Emma Smith (violin, guitar, vocals), Andrew McKinney (bass, vocals), Jason Buckle (synth, electronics) and Adam Betts (drums, percussion, vocals) – there's probably no Cocker album more declined in the first person than "Beyond the Pale". After all, just read titles like "Must I Evolve?", "Am I Missing Something?" or "Sometimes I Am Pharoah", often phrased as questions, to grasp the existential, deeply personal dimension of this material. This also explains why "Beyond the Pale" is a darker album than Cocker tries to let on. There's more nostalgia than desire to celebrate, for instance, in the reflections of "House Music All Night Long", a title that would suggest quite different moods. This isn't to say the record is a parade of bitter songs, mind you, but our man seems more than ever caught up in reflections whose conclusions are hard to pin down.

If we were to take the above questions at face value, despite the choir's affirmative answers, we'd be tempted to reiterate that Jarvis Cocker has no intention of growing old, nor of falling in line. The material on this Jarv Is record is perhaps the closest thing to Pulp, and hardly by accident. Tracks that are even leaner, with the synths on full display, yet still willing to venture into delicate orchestrations led by the violin, as on "Save the Whale", perhaps the most successful moment here, complete with a knowing whisper à la Serge Gainsbourg. The synth-pop of "Am I Missing Something?" is built on a brand-new melodic minimalism, though open to a final crescendo, in a context reminiscent of the "This Is Hardcore" era.

While admittedly not a particularly inspired album, good old Jarvis still manages to pull a handful of standout songs out of his hat: besides the two tracks just mentioned, there's undoubtedly "Sometimes I Am Pharoah", which introduces an avant-garde streak that's altogether new for him and, at the same time, successful, as well as "Children of the Echo", which boasts a great chorus wrapped around some of the fussiest verses in the set. It's curious, incidentally, that on this track, as on "Sqanky Modes", Cocker seems to be doing an impression of the more mature Albarn, as if the Britpop scene were still a hall of mirrors.

After 24 years of recorded silence, Pulp release a new album, their eighth, titled More (2025), a project crafted and successful down to the smallest detail, starting with the ever-sharp lyrics, the fruit of a life spent in the name of narrative grace: "this time I'll manage it," Jarvis sings on "Spike Island", before asking himself, on "Grow Ups", for one last flash of youth and emotional fertility, "hurry up, because with sex, time's running out". From the very first notes of the single "Spike Island" you can feel a creative exuberance in which a mix of styles coexists with an almost tailor-made elegance, a distillation of imagination and realism that lays bare the whole project: "I was born to perform, it's a calling, it's what I exist to do".

It's not a conventional album, More. Whether it's the romantic bloom of "Tina" or the little pop gem "Got To Have Love", Pulp reconcile happiness and resignation with just the right dose of drama and awareness — the same awareness that stirs the more soulful movements of "Background Noise", a knowing reflection on the inevitable fading of feelings: "as the years go by, love turns into background noise, like this ringing in my ears, like the hum of a fridge, you only notice it when it's gone".

With a deft theatrical and musical twist, Pulp have become a band again: everything has remained pleasantly unchanged, the breath/sigh of the strings, the gleam of polished keyboards and guitars, the rhythms perfectly tuned for a disco night, and even the typical cascades of violin notes that make you forget Russell Senior's absence.

Still, it's not a predictable album, More. The elegant waltz-time piano ballad "Farmers Market" is atypical, almost singer-songwriter in feel, a narrative counterpart to the famous "Common People", while the mournful "The Hymn Of The North" pulls off the difficult feat of realising the unfulfilled dream of We Love Life, namely highlighting the band's strong bond with the poetics of Scott Walker.

The typically Pulp gems are of course not lacking: besides the already mentioned "Spike Island" and "Got To Have Love", there are the sensual, biting insights of "Slow Jam", the hushed yet incendiary glam-funk-disco sounds of the irresistible "My Sex", and the unjaded romanticism of the beautiful — simply beautiful — "Partial Eclipse". The album's final track wasn't just written together with Richard Hawley, but also features no fewer than five members of the Eno family, Brian included, cast in the role of a secular choir within a minimal sonic setting. And it's quite telling that this last track is titled "A Sunset", almost an answer to the "Sunrise" that closed out the hostilities of We Love Life: if the Sheffield band's intention was to show us that the final chapter of their story has not yet been written, it must be said they've pulled it off perfectly, and can at last count on a third family heirloom to pass down to posterity.

Contributions by Fabio Guastalla ("Room 29", "Beyond The Pale") and Gianfranco Marmoro ("More").

The author wishes to thank Giorgio Rajani for his invaluable and irreplaceable help.

Bibliographical references:

M. Melissano: Brit. La nuova scena inglese – Castelvecchi

L. Bonanni: Gli Oasis e il brit pop. Come sentirsi vivi negli anni Novanta – Lo Vecchio

C. Villa: Brit pop. Piccola enciclopedia (1990-1997) – Giunti

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