Britpop legends Pulp have dropped their first album in 25 years. I have some thoughts
A new Pulp album after 24 years wasn't Jarvis Cocker's idea.
'There's been a groundswell of feeling … a desire for us to play again,' he told me three years ago when plugging his memoir, Good Pop, Bad Pop. 'You know, if people clap for long enough it's a bit churlish if you don't go and give them another bit of music.'
Hence, More. Not a lunge for relevance from a legacy act but a thoughtful response to friends in need. The distinction is everything because this long after the pilled-up promise of Disco 2000 we don't need a new high. We need something more real, for less certain times.
Pulp were always the smarter, more ironic, less cavalier band of the Britpop pack. Common People was a '90s anthem. True stories of sex and shame, class resentment and crushed romanticism bopped to kitchen-sink disco and velvet melodrama.
Even in the literal throes of ecstasy, Cocker was the guy who wasn't quite buying in. 'Is this the way they say the future's meant to feel?/Or just 20,000 people standing in a field?' he wondered in Sorted for E's and Wizz.
True to those dry-eyed instincts, More is no grab for lost youth or even nostalgia. It's an embrace of where we've landed, a mirror held to ageing, love and the weight of shared memory.
Spike Island lurches in like a boozy contiki bus, a flashback to a mythic Stone Roses show in 1990: a generational touchstone for Brits for which there's no real Australian equivalent, unless you count Nirvana (we were all American back then) at the first Big Day Out.
Cocker conjures a vision of near-transcendence coexisting with an immediate comedown, the cosmos moving on in the midst of his tiny epiphany. 'I exist to do this,' he wails, hips a-wiggle, 'shouting and pointing.' A rock star's battle cry in past tense: sad, but strangely noble, too.
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Perth Now
2 days ago
- Perth Now
Oasis to open merchandise stores across UK and Ireland to mark reunion tour
Oasis are set to open a number of pop-up stores in the UK and Ireland this summer for their reunion tour. The first store will open in the Wonderwall band's home city of Manchester on June 20 and will remain accessible to fans until July 27. Other stores will be located in Cardiff, London, Edinburgh, Dublin and Birmingham and are to launch the merchandise collection for the eagerly-anticipated Oasis Live '25 Tour, which begins at the Principality Stadium in Cardiff on July 4 and marks the first time that brothers Noel and Liam Gallagher will have performed together for 16 years. The collection will be made available to purchase online and further details on individual items and specific store locations will be revealed later this week. The merchandise will feature specific brand collaborations and limited edition products that will not be available anywhere else. Noel and Liam have ended their lengthy feud to get the Britpop icons back together and the former's close friend – U2 frontman Bono – claims that the musician has been left "shocked by how great" Oasis are sounding in rehearsals. The Irish rocker told Apple Music 1 with Zane Lowe: "They're both funny. I'm still very close with Noel, and he sent a message to me saying he's kind of shocked by how great the band is [sounding at rehearsals]. I think we're going to have a good summer." Bono added of Oasis: "I love them. I just love them. And what I really love is, the preciousness that had gotten [into] indie music, they just blew it out. There was just the swagger, and the sound of getting out of the ghetto, not glamorising it." The 65-year-old star revealed that he will be going to watch the Supersonic hitmakers on the tour. Asked if he would be in attendance, Bono said: "Of course! And remember what they did as well. Those kind of big guitars, big Neil Young generous sounds. "They were against the law in the UK, and they're like, 'No, I have to do what I f****** want. And then they had this kind of rhythmic, beautiful quality. "'Today is gonna be the day...' So that's a kind of, that's an almost R and B rhythm. "But Manchester was very influenced by dance music, so they were groovier than anybody. They were rawer than anybody."
ABC News
3 days ago
- ABC News
Triple j's Hottest 100 of Australian songs is a rare and special countdown
The triple j Hottest 100 has been appointment listening for music lovers for decades. The concept is simple: Australian music lovers vote for their favourite songs of the past year and triple j counts down the most popular 100 across a day of wild and wonderful radio. On the most special occasions, triple j pulls out the concept for a themed edition of the countdown, and occasions don't get much more special than your 50th birthday. As part of triple j's milestone celebrations this year, it's inviting us to vote for the 100 best Australian songs, a prospect that is filling us with equal amounts of joy and fear as we consider how we're going to choose our votes. It's not the first time we've experienced a special edition of the Hottest 100. Let's reflect on the rare occasions the countdown has broken tradition and gone out with a non-annual countdown. The Hottest 100 began as an "all time" countdown in 1989 and remained that way for three years. Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart took out the top spot in the first two years, only to be pipped by Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit in 1991, which was released just a couple of months earlier. The "all time" format reverted to an annual countdown in 1993 (there was no Hottest 100 in 92) and has been brought back twice since. In August 1998, triple j put out the call for the best songs of all time again, and the results were … well, a lot of them were pretty similar to what we saw seven years prior. Just like the last one, Nirvana took the top slot, while Hunters & Collectors nabbed second spot (where they'd sat in both 1989 and 1990) with their anthem Throw Your Arms Around Me. Just like in 91, The Cure were the most-voted-for artist, with five songs in the countdown (down from nine in 1991). So far, so much the same. But it wouldn't stay that way for long. Surprise Entry: Pauline Pantsdown — Backdoor Man (#92) Shoulda Been Higher: David Bowie — Heroes (#100) To mark the Hottest 100's 20th anniversary, this edition mirrored the original's "all time" format … to controversial results. Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit was voted number one for a third time (after topping the polls in 1991 and 1998), demonstrative of an outcome that was great for white men with guitars. But not so much anything else. Voters leaned into rock music, with very little electronic in the mix, and no rap or hip hop besides The Nosebleed Section by Hilltop Hoods at number 17, the highest charting of 13 Australian acts. Worse still, there was next to no women: zero solo female artists, and just seven acts featuring a female instrumentalist or guest singer. Yikes. While half of the list was made up of songs that had never appeared in a Hottest 100 before (and in some cases, never would again), it reads more like a Rolling Stone albums list, reinforcing a vintage-rock canon: The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Beach Boys, The Rolling Stones. Curiously, the youth were to blame! From the half a million votes, the 19-21 age group was the largest voting demographic. "Seeing their favourites, you'd think it was a much older demographic," then-music director Richard Kingsmill told The Australian at the time. Surprise Entry: The Shins– New Slang (#72) Shoulda Been Higher: Midnight Oil — Beds Are Burning (#97) The only ever "albums" Hottest 100 was, in typical triple j fashion, a big old celebration of Australian music. Powderfinger nabbed the top spot with their 2000 album Odyssey Number Five, retaining the hold the Brisbane band had over the Hottest 100 for many years. They were the only band to have two albums in the list's top 10, with their 1998 record Internationalist (which is a better album) appearing in sixth spot. The list will make you marvel at the depth and quality of Australian music and, while there's a bit of recency bias (forgive me for claiming that not all of the 11 albums released in 2010 deserved a spot), the list is an enticing feast of Australian music that makes us wonder why we listen to anything else. Unlike usual Hottest 100s, this one was broadcast over the span of two weeks to ensure listeners got a good sense of the depth of the records. Surprise Entry: Gypsy & The Cat — Gilgamesh (#91) Shoulda Been Higher: The Go-Betweens — 16 Lovers Lane (#84) The first non-annual countdown to have a time stipulation saw audiences vote for songs released between January 1, 1993, and December 31, 2012. You know what that means? No Teen Spirit, no Joy Division, no Hunters & Collectors, hell The Cure — who'd dominated early all time lists — didn't get a look-in … It's interesting to see how the mood around certain songs and movements had changed over the years. Oasis topped the countdown with Wonderwall, but that song only managed to hit 12th spot in the 2009 count. You can see the trajectory of The Killers's Mr. Brightside through these lists: It was number 13 in its year of release, 38th in 2009's all time countdown, and it landed in seventh here. Would it go higher today? It wasn't the best showing for Australian songs, which made up a relatively modest 29 per cent of the countdown. Hilltop Hoods's The Nosebleed Section ranked best at number four, while of course Powderfinger scored two top 10 entries. Surprise Entry: Not many surprises here! The Kooks's Naive (#87) didn't make the countdown upon its release in 2006, so we'll say that. But it has since become an anthem … Shoulda Been Higher: Coolio — Gangsta's Paradise (ft. L.V.) (#85) Not so fun fact: This countdown was broadcast on March 14, 2020, right before COVID-19 forced most of Australia into lockdown. Pre-pandemic, it seemed the hardest thing voters had to contend with was choosing only 10 songs from across 10 years, rather than just 12 months. 2012 proved to be the "Hottest year", making up 20 entries in the poll, while 67 per cent of the list came out in 2014 or earlier. Half the fun was comparing how tunes had gained favour — with 12 songs jumping up in rankings from previous Hottest 100 appearances — or fallen out of it, with 78 dropping down. That included all previous Hottest 100 number ones making way for a new victor: Tame Impala. Kevin Parker's actually-it's-just-one-guy project had always performed well in the Hottest 100, including with four top 10 rankings from 11 entries, but The Less I Know The Better marked Tame Impala's first time at number one. (He'd return to the top slot in 2022, courtesy of a cover by The Wiggles.) Beating out international heavy-hitters like Arctic Monkeys, Kanye West, Lorde and local favourites Gotye, Flume and Angus & Julia Stone, Parker called the win the "most important thing to happen" to Tame Impala. For the rest of us, this special edition offered a compelling portrait of young Australia's shifting music tastes over a rapidly changing decade. Surprise Entry: Adrian Lux– Teenage Crime (#59) Shoulda Been Higher: Azealia Banks — 212 ft. Lazy Jay (#68) The latest non-annual Hottest 100 was a celebration of triple j's other big brand. Swelling from its origins as a humble, mostly acoustic mornings segment in 2004 to a blockbuster, internationally renowned platform, Like A Version got the Hottest 100 treatment. And Aussie artists dominated. Eighty-one songs in the countdown came from homegrown artists, the most of any Hottest 100 countdown. The likes of Lime Cordiale taking on Divinyls' biggest hit, A.B. Original rewiring a Paul Kelly classic, and King Stingray giving Coldplay a Yolŋu manikay makeover all reaching the pointy end. The people's top choice? Sydney trio DMA'S, who had just two acoustic guitars, a tender vocal performance, some chewing gum, and a dream. But their stripped-back take on Cher's 'Believe' was the clear frontrunner of the 840 eligible Like A Versions. Besides demonstrating how wildly the ingredients can vary to produce a successful cover, the LAV list shows how fun a themed Hottest 100 can be outside the tried-and-true recipe of voting on the year's hottest songs. 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Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
How this British star's teenage efforts to impress girls finally came in handy
Music, you might add, is one of Sturgess's great unresolved loves. Growing up in Surrey, England, he was always in bands, running the gamut from hip-hop to indie. He has never lost his fervour, even as he scaled the Hollywood ladder to A-list acclaim, through movies including 2012's Cloud Atlas and the original 2011 adaptation of David Nicholls' One Day. Loading Tousle-haired, bearded and sleepy eyed, he looks as much a wan troubadour as he does a gleaming celebrity. Even last year he released an album as his alter ego King Curious. Spoiler – it's good. But it's also telling that Sturgess chooses to perform under another name. 'I get it – there's always a bit of an edge to it when an actor puts a record out. It's always, a bit, 'Uh-oh, hold your breath.' And rightly so, I would be exactly the same if I saw an actor put a record out. But the reaction [to his own record Common Sense for the Animal ] was amazing. I was so stoked that all these music magazines really took it on.' It meant that when he first got the script for Mix Tape what he most wanted to know was what was going to be on the soundtrack. Because frankly, if the tunes weren't right, then Sturgess wasn't on board. 'The music made me a little bit nervous because when I got the script it wasn't established what tracks we would be using,' he says. That's also part of the subject in Mix Tape. 'Everyone has such a difficult relationship with music and what tracks were important to them,' he says. 'And Lucy the director [Lucy Gaffy, Totally Completely Fine] was Australian, so I was hoping that she would get on board with the same music I thought Daniel should be listening to. Even my wife and I started arguing about different possibilities for what music he'd like.' Thankfully the tunes are right, at least to my ears – many of the high points of Madchester (the Stone Roses, Happy Mondays, Tte Charlatans) and the era just preceding it (Joy Division, New Order) are all present and correct. But Mix Tape is also interested in the way we consume music, now and then, and how that affects us. Back then it meant a C90 crafted over weeks from a twin cassette deck. These days it's streaming, shared playlists, likes and comments. 'With the tech now, you just send over a playlist of a track on YouTube to each other, but it doesn't hold the same value, I don't think,' Sturgess says. 'Back then you had to put real effort in to recording a song on a tape, do a bit of artwork on the front, call it something funny and cool …' That doesn't mean that Sturgess is a Luddite. He sees the storytelling possibilities inherent in the new tech. 'On the other hand, phones and relationships is interesting. They provide this secret link to another world in everyone's back pocket and it means that a two-way relationship always has a third party – the phone.' Loading Music also engenders nostalgia, a what-was-I-doing-when-I-first-heard that frisson, and that goes for Sturgess, too. He filmed the Australian sections of Mix Tape in Sydney, taking him away from his home and family in east London and back to a city he last visited when he was barely older than the young Daniel. 'I went to Sydney in my 20s with one of my best mates, who strangely enough is half Australian and half from Sheffield. Back then it was all hostel beds and bars and beaches … I didn't remember much. So it was really nice to go back and get a real idea of the place. It's a wonderful city.' Talking of nostalgia and lost love revisited, it would be remiss to interview Sturgess in 2025 without mentioning One Day. Last year Netflix scored a huge hit with their series adaptation of the David Nicholls comedy-romance, but it was Sturgess who played Dexter in the original 2011 film opposite Anne Hathaway. 'It was actually really nice for me to watch One Day,' he says. 'I'd just worked with Ambika Mod [who plays Emma in the Netflix series] on another TV show that we did for Disney [ The Stolen Girl ] and I was grateful for our friendship because it gave me a personal connection to this new version of One Day that was coming out. It was very nostalgic for me. But I just felt happy for them. They were having their time and we had ours. It was a special time in my life, making that film.' That's the thing with the past. You can't change it. But you can still wallow in the memories and the what-ifs. Now go dig out that old mixtape and see where it takes you.
