Latest news with #JarvisCocker
Spectator
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Spectator
Jarvis Cocker still has the voice
For bands of a certain vintage, the art of keeping the show on the road involves a tightly choreographed dance between past and present, old and new, then and now. It's not a one-way transaction: there should be some recognition that the people you are playing to have also evolved since the glory years of the indie disco and student union. Halfway through the first date of Pulp's UK tour following the release of More, their first album in 24 years, I started thinking about Withnail & I. Watching the film repeatedly as a young man, the booze-soaked antics of the dissipated 'resting actor' and his addled supporting cast seemed like great larks, albeit in extremis. The last time I watched it, approaching 50, sober as a judge, it played as the bleak tragedy it had surely always been. To steal the title of a Pulp song: something changed. The music of Pulp has always been scored through with melancholy and painful longing, but its emotional heft and essentially good heart is more evident these days. Singer Jarvis Cocker no longer hides behind so many layers of ironic distance. As he half-joked before 'Help The Aged', at 61 he now requires audience assistance to reach the high notes. More is Cocker's delayed, reluctant reckoning with adulthood. As he put it on 'Grown Ups', 'We're hoping that we don't get shown up/ 'Cos everybody's got to grow up.' Love was once a source of shame and embarrassment, he told us, but he has finally reached a gentlemanly accommodation with it. The shift was evident on new songs such as 'Slow Jam', 'Got To Have Love' and 'Farmer's Market' – a terrific orchestral ballad – but also in the low-key sense of gratitude that emanated from the stage. Cocker came across as a warmer, less wary figure, tossing out grapes and sweeties to the front rows. There were more obvious signs that we weren't in 1995 anymore. The group's core four – Cocker, Nick Banks, Candida Doyle and Mark Webber – nowadays resemble members of the history department of a Russell Group university who have decided to enliven the pre-retirement years by forming a band. They were joined by a string ensemble, a percussionist and several superb multi-instrumentalists, enabling Pulp2025 to shift seamlessly from the vast, corrupted Bond theme drama of 'This Is Hardcore' to a pared-down acoustic version of 'Something Changed'. In the midst of all that evolution, the trick was that it was all still very recognisably Pulp. Framed by purple velvet drapes, the set was a Sheffield bingo hall transported to an aircraft hangar, while an air of slightly shambolic indie-ism survived the transition to a slick arena show. Cocker still has the voice and, perhaps more importantly, the moves. His hands pirouetted like a good actor playing a bad magician. He corkscrewed into the air when excitement got the better of him, such as the moment when 'Common People' exploded into life. The song, which should by now feel glossy with overfamiliarity, was instead a juggernaut of propulsive energy. By then, they had played most of More. 'Tina' might be a classic Pulp title destined to be for ever waiting in vain to become a classic Pulp song, but much of the new material held its own among the gold-standard highlights: 'Sorted For E's & Whizz', an exhilarating 'Disco 2000', 'Mis-Shapes', 'Do You Remember The First Time?' and 'Babies', as well as outliers such as 'The Fear' and 'O.U. (Gone, Gone)'. Nothing on More could possibly have the impact of those songs, a point the audience instinctively understood. That was then, this is now. Both band and fans simply seemed appreciative of the opportunity for 'one last sunset, one final blaze of glory.' The Waterboys are also touring a new album, Life, Death and Dennis Hopper, a gonzo, genre-hopping 25-track sprawl that maps the life of the maverick US actor to the shifting currents of the postwar counterculture. They played around half of it in Edinburgh, in a single suite that unspooled against a Hopper-heavy backdrop of black and white stills and saturated Super-8 video footage. It felt fresh, colourful, eccentric and ultimately celebratory. On either side, they crunched out setlist staples such as 'Be My Enemy' and 'A Girl Called Johnny', which delivered power and punch without much in the way of surprises. The gig was at its best when the interplay between the musicians had space to stretch out. A reworked 'This Is The Sea' gathered an elemental power, and there was a nod to the recently departed Sly Stone during the still effervescent 'The Whole Of The Moon'. Like Pulp, the Waterboys have seen over 40 years' of active service, yet they are still evolving.
New Statesman
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Jarvis Cocker at 61: Is this hardcore?
Photo byAre we in the era of the Mature Reunion Album? long hoped for but largely unexpected album releases lately by Blur, Everything But The Girl, Stereolab, and now Pulp, measuring the middle-age of both artist and audience. More, released on 6 June 2025, is the eighth Pulp album (their seventh came out just weeks after 9/11.) On Friday they re-united at the O2 and, fittingly, the album topped the UK Charts that night: Pulp's audience wanted More. When Pulp take to the stage, it is in front of a red velvet backdrop, the now expanded eight-piece band augmented by string section. Jarvis Cocker ascends the stage alone on a podium. The age-appropriate indie chug of opener 'Spike Island' is uplifting, but a little more ordinary than their 1990s material, which fused together two distinctly Yorkshire traditions: Alan Bennett observational comedy and specifically Sheffield electronic futurism. Cocker, 61, dressed in a dark, double-breasted suit, addresses the audience with the ease and command of a broadcaster. 'Once we're alive,' says the frontman early in the set, 'we have to grow up. The first step of growing up is clapping in time.' He invites the audience to join him in this 'developmental milestone', a neat bit of crowd control that tees up Mature Reunion Album track 'Grown-Ups', and one of tonight's surprise themes. Pulp's intergenerational appeal is apparent across the stadium. Older parents now bring grown-up children. Though their audience is noticeably broad – only a few lone aesthetes adopt the frontman's signature specs and vintage suits – Cocker remains the patron saint of people who hate stag do's and visit charity shops long after their salaries have stopped necessitating that. More than this, Pulp endure as cool, evidenced by Charli XCX's recent on stage call for a 'Pulp summer' at Coachella Festival in a way that impossible to imagine her doing for Blur. On the London stage, each of Pulp's Mature Reunion Album tracks have an unconscious double in their earlier work. 'Farmer's Market', a ballad Cocker says tonight is about how he met his wife, in the audience – hustling her phone number at the car park of an organic food bazaar – obsesses over the same questions of chance and fate as 1995's 'Something Changed', which tonight is delivered acoustic by the four nucleus Pulp members (happily, viewed together, they still look more like a departmental meeting than an arena rock group.) Ditto new song 'Tina' is a pen portrait of late middle-aged lust on a commuter train (which also contains a good reference to Mrs Thatcher's TINA acronym.) It's a greyer haired update of 'Disco 2000', their 1995 glam rock stomp about the memory of teenage sexual obsession. Listening to Pulp's greatest hits CD on my early teenage paper round in the 2000s, I remember feeling so scandalised and compelled by all the sex in their work that I worried I should keep this enjoyment private (lest it reveal something inadvertently awful about myself). There is less of this side of Pulp tonight, their more subversive songs about tragedies in reservoirs or exacting sexual revenge against West Londoners have been temporarily retired, to be our-age appropriate. This dulls some of Pulp's weird appeal. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Cocker's best writing was first as a misfit outsider in his native Sheffield, then as a geographical and class outsider in 90s media London. But that success made him something of an insider, which his writing has never really reckoned with. Cocker is one of his generation's cultural luminaries. He is a longstanding BBC broadcaster, a Meltdown curate and broadsheet arts fave whose collected lyrics are published by Faber. Now, the albums he infrequently releases seldom examine what exactly this type of life is like. Pulp's last big statement forms the unexpected high point of tonight's set. Introducing 'This Is Hardcore', the title track of their 1998 album, Cocker sits at the top of a small illuminated staircase (metaphor klaxon), splayed across a leather Mastermind chair and sipping an espresso, which is brave at 9PM. Against a seedy, dramatic loop, which repeats and throbs like erotic fixation, Cocker purrs about wanting it now, wanting it bad. The song's lyrics were written to compare the singer's experience of fame to what he termed his 'revulsion and attraction' to pornography, all with the subtext of his then escalating cocaine use. I had to get a little past paper round age to learn to love that part of the hits CD. Tonight, four songs come from This Is Hardcore, and it's in this material that Cocker delivers his most captivating performances of the night. Perhaps now that the album's chief obsessions of fame, pornography and cocaine have all accelerated in the 2020s, it has widened that album's appeal. The final third of the set runs through their big, 1990s hit singles. The biggest of which is 'Common People'. 'Common People' was conceived as a fanfare, but looking around tonight it's something of a requiem for a period when strange, five-minute songs about class somehow topped the charts. But it's never typically the biggest songs that get you in arena shows. Earlier, during 'Help The Aged', another This Is Hardcore cut, Cocker invites the audience to sing a falsetto refrain that he can seemingly no longer summon as his baritone has grown older, and the line 'funny how it all falls away' flashes on the screens for our benefit. Like 'Eleanor Rigby', 'Help The Aged' is one of those rare songs that peers out from pop's cult of youth, and is alarmed by what it finds there. 'Old age isn't a battle,' wrote Philip Roth in 2006's Everyman, 'old age is a massacre.' Guitarist Mark Webber's scuzzy, vengeful guitar part sounds suitably blood-shedding. There's a line in the song about dying your hair: the one thing you can change as time bulldozes on. As the line is delivered, a woman in front of me smiles at her partner, ruffles his grey hair, and cuddles up to him. Pulp's work has found a new theme. Something scary, something you might view with revulsion and attraction, something really hardcore: getting old. [See more: The rise of the west] Related
Malay Mail
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Malay Mail
Jarvis Cocker and Pulp return to No. 1 with ‘More' — their first album in over 20 years
LONDON, June 15 — British band Pulp returned to the top of the UK album charts for the first time in 27 years on Friday as their new record More went to No. 1. More was released last week just before the group, led by Jarvis Cocker, kicked off a UK and Ireland tour. It is Pulp's eighth studio album and their first since 2001's We Love Life. The band, from the British city of Sheffield, last topped the UK albums chart in 1998 with This Is Hardcore. The Official Charts Company said More also topped the Official Vinyl Albums Chart. 'The day an album is released to the public is a very special day,' Cocker said in a statement on the album's release. 'The music changes from being something owned only by the band to something that can be owned by anyone - it can become part of people's lives. It's magic.' Pulp found fame in the mid-1990s Britpop wave with hits such as Common People, Disco 2000 and Help the Aged. They split in 2002 before reforming twice in subsequent years. More was recorded over three weeks in late 2024 and the band has previously said it was dedicated to late bassist Steve Mackey, who died in 2023. Mackey is credited as a songwriter on two of the album's songs. Pulp released the first single from the album, Spike Island, in April followed by Got to Have Love in May. — Reuters
The Journal
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Journal
Pulp have topped the UK album chart for the first time in 27 years
INDIE ROCKERS PULP have achieved their first UK number one album in 27 years. More, which was released last Friday, is the Britpop band's first studio album since 2001′s We Love Life. It has also been named the biggest record of the week on wax, topping the Official Vinyl Albums Chart. More is sitting at number six in the Irish album chart. The last time the Sheffield-based band topped the UK album charts was in 1998 with This Is Hardcore which followed on from their best-known studio album, Different Class, released three years prior and their only other chart-topping LP. Advertisement Pulp reunited for a second time in 2022 after frontman Jarvis Cocker confirmed they would begin touring together again. They are playing a number of gigs throughout the summer, including sets at Montreux Jazz Festival in July and Incheon Pentaport Rock Festival in August. The veteran rockers played in Dublin's 3Arena last week. They have a gap in their schedule between 21 June and 10 July, which has fuelled speculation that they could be among the secret acts currently listed as 'TBA' in the line-up for Glastonbury Festival, which is taking place later this month. With reporting from Press Association Readers like you are keeping these stories free for everyone... A mix of advertising and supporting contributions helps keep paywalls away from valuable information like this article. Over 5,000 readers like you have already stepped up and support us with a monthly payment or a once-off donation. Learn More Support The Journal
The Guardian
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
‘Misshapes, mistakes, misfits': Pulp's signature secondhand style has stood test of time
Thirty years ago this month Pulp played the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury and took their reputation to another level. If part of this was due to a storming set taking in their new hit Common People, debuts for their future hits Mis-Shapes and Disco 2000, and the star power of singer Jarvis Cocker, it was also down to their look. There was Steve Mackay, bass guitarist, in a fitted shirt and kipper tie, Russell Senior on violin in a blue safari shirt, keyboardist Candida Doyle in sequins and – of course – Cocker, in his now signature secondhand 70s tailoring. Fast forward to 2025 and Pulp have their first album in 24 years, More, and a tour taking in the UK, Europe and the US. It is a moment that will put their music and their style back in the public eye. While the bucket hats, parkas and round specs of Oasis, the other Britpop band on tour this summer, are likely to dominate what young men are wearing, Pulp's look is an alternative one that celebrates the secondhand. As Cocker writes in his book Good Pop, Bad Pop, his first jumble-sale buy, a garish 70s shirt, was 'the real beginning of the Pulp aesthetic'. Its pomp can be seen in videos such as for 1993's Babies – with Cocker topless in a flared suit, Mackay in another garish print and Doyle in mod-ish stripes. The influence of Pulp's look in the 90s was partly about the sugar high of its eclectic, graphic take on nostalgia but also its accessibility. '[Other bands] had a secondhand look, but Pulp made it a little bit more colourful, not quite kitsch, but on the edge of kitsch,' says Miranda Sawyer, the author of the Britpop history Uncommon People. Doyle says: 'They obviously looked stylish but you did think, 'OK I can get that stuff'. We were skint for a lot of the first 10 years being in Pulp. I used to find some amazing things [in charity shops].' Three decades later, and secondhand shopping once again dominates the way young people dress. Peter Bevan, 30, a stylist and contributing editor of the Rakish Gent, says: 'Everyone I know who's my age or younger shops in charity shops, in vintage shops, Depop, Vinted. I don't know many people that buy loads of new things any more.' A survey in 2023 found that 64% of gen Z will look for an item secondhand before buying it new. While part of this is likely down to cost and environmental concerns, the haphazard nature of secondhand shopping is championed as a way to express yourself through clothing. 'Everyone who looks cool [now] is doing them rather than trying to do something else,' adds Bevan, who says this is why Pulp appeal. 'Although obviously [Pulp] all made very considered choices that work together you can tell that they're [each] dressing for them[selves] as well.' James Millar, a 22-year-old guitarist in the band the Sukis, regularly shares videos of his Cocker-like looks to the band's 103.4k TikTok followers, and watched Pulp perform in Dublin this week. '[Cocker] is heavily influenced by 70s fashion … but he's not doing 70s cosplay. When I see pictures of him, and what he wears, it just looks like him,' he says. While Doyle bristles at being classed as a Britpop band – 'we don't associate with [it] because of the union jack,' she says – they will inevitably be compared with Oasis, with both bands touring this summer. Style-wise, Bevan says Pulp come out on top. 'I like the Oasis look but [they were originally about a] counter-culture fashion moment. Now it feels like they're meant to look like they're not trying hard in a fashion way but in reality they are trying really hard to look cool. Pulp all have their own personal sense of style that goes way beyond throwing on a Stone Island windbreaker and a pair of jeans.' Sign up to Fashion Statement Style, with substance: what's really trending this week, a roundup of the best fashion journalism and your wardrobe dilemmas solved after newsletter promotion The fact that success eluded Pulp for a decade helped. 'Me and Jarvis were in our 30s by the time we got big, we'd had a long life of knowing what we liked to wear,' says Doyle. While other bands might have had stylists as standard, this was avoided in favour of wearing their own clothes, a principle that remains today. 'I still have a very strong sense of what I like and what I really don't like,' says Doyle. 'I make sure I wear something as bright as possible. I've got a new [outfit] that's white, there are some sequins on it, and there are some tassels. It's good with tassels, because when you move, it comes with you.' She says clothes were even part of what helped form Pulp in the first place. 'We all grew up in Sheffield, and if you dressed a bit strangely, you stood out. So we'd all congregate at the same venues,' she says, adding insight that sounds like a lost lyric from revenge of the nerds anthem, Mis-Shapes: 'There'd be townies and weirdos, squares and students.' Perhaps the enduring appeal of Pulp's style is once again about the triumph of Mis-Shapes, with its lyrics of 'misshapes, mistakes, misfits', and how expressing your personality through the lucky dip of secondhand clothing is a win. 'Jarvis understands his appeal,' says Sawyer. 'He's accentuating all the things that people have picked on him for. He's saying, 'I'm a tall weed or whatever you wanted to call me. This is who I am and, actually, I look great'.'
