Pulp has returned with a new album, their first in 24 years. Who could’ve predicted that?
Not even the band, it turns out. “It took us by surprise as well,” dynamic frontman Jarvis Cocker told The Associated Press. “Why not?”
If there are casual Pulp fans, they don’t make themselves known. The ambitious Britpop-and-then-some band emerged in the late-'70s in Sheffield, England, artistic outsiders with a penchant for the glam, grim, and in the case of Cocker, the gawky. Fame alluded them until the mid-'90s, and then it rushed in with the trend of Cool Britannia.
Their songs varied wildly from their contemporaries, like the recently reunited Blur and soon-to-be back together Oasis. Instead, Pulp’s David Bowie-informed synth-pop arrived with humor, ambiguity and intellect — songs about class consciousness that manage to be groovy, glib, awkward and amorous all at once.
Then, and in the decades since, Pulp has inspired devotion from loyal fans across generations. They’ve charmed those lucky enough to catch band members in their heyday before a kind of careerism led to a hiatus in 2002 — and those who saw them for the first time during reunion tours in 2011 and 2022. With all that reputation on the line, it’s reassuring that the band has decided to give its audience “More,” their first new album in over two decades.
Give them ‘More’
There were a few catalysts for “More.” The first: “We could get along with each other still,” jokes drummer Nick Banks. “It wasn’t too painful.” The second: The band worked a new song into their recent reunion show run — “The Hymn of the North,” originally written for Simon Stephens’ 2019 play “Light Falls” — and people seemed to like it.
The third and most significant: The band’s bassist and core member Steve Mackey died in 2023.
“It made me realize that you don’t have endless amounts of time,” Cocker says. “You’ve still got an opportunity to create things, if you want to. Are you going to give it a go?”
And so, they did. Cocker assured his bandmates Banks, guitarist Mark Webber and keyboardist Candida Doyle that the recording process could be done quickly — in three weeks, lightspeed for a band that has infamously agonized over its latter records, like 1998’s “This Is Hardcore.”
Webber describes a “reticence to get involved in a yearslong process” that was alleviated when they started to work on new songs which came “quite easily.” That’s at least partially due to the fact that, for the first time in the history of the band, Cocker elected to “write the words in advance. ... It’s taken me until the age of 61 to realize it: If you write the words before you go into the studio, it makes it a much more pleasant experience.”
The 11 tracks that make up “More” are a combination of new and old songs written across Pulp’s career. The late Mackey has a writing credit on both the sultry, existential “Grown Ups” originally demoed around “This Is Hardcore,” and the edgy disco “Got to Have Love,” written around “the turn of the millennium,” as Cocker explains. “I did have words, but I found myself emotionally unable to sing them.”
“Without love you’re just making a fool of yourself,” he sings in the second verse. “I got nothing else to say about it.”
It makes sense, then, that the romantic song was held until “More,” when Cocker believed them — coincidentally, after he was married in June of last year.
A pop band reflects
Maturation — the literality of growing up on “Grown Ups” — is a prevalent theme on “More,” delivered with age-appropriate insight. “I was always told at school that I had an immature attitude. I just didn’t see any point in growing up, really. It seemed like all the fun was had by people when they were younger,” said Cocker.
“But, as I said on the back of the ‘This Is Hardcore’ album, it’s OK to grow up, as long as you don’t grow old. And I still agree with that, I think. Growing old is losing interest in the world and deciding that you’re not gonna change. You’ve done your bit and that’s it. That doesn’t interest me.”
“You have to retain an interest in the world and that keeps you alive,” he adds. “So, you grow up. And hopefully you live better, and you treat other people better. But you don’t grow old.”
In addition to “More,” 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of the song that defines their career, “Common People.”
“That one, we’ve never really fallen out of love with,” says Webber.
“Because of the way it affects people, really, you can’t fall out of love with it,” adds Cocker.
“More,” produced by James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Fontaines D.C.), arrives Friday. The band will immediately embark on a UK and North American tour. Then, who knows? Is this the beginning of a new, active era for the band?
“The next one is going to be called ‘Even More,’” Cocker jokes. “Nah, I don’t know. The album wasn’t conceived of as a tombstone. ... The jury is out.”
“It wouldn’t be good for it to end up feeling like you’re stuck on a treadmill,” Banks adds. “And at the moment, it’s still pretty exciting.”
