Pulp - More
★★★★
ROUGH TRADE
When Jarvis Cocker rhymes “vicars” with “knickers” a couple of songs after dropping a reference to Ingmar Bergman into the end of Spike Island, it soon becomes apparent that at least one of Pulp’s idiosyncratic missions – loosely, to make existential crisis out of bedroom farce, or bedroom farce out of existential crisis – remains intact on this hearteningly fine comeback album.
More does, of course, also present a more reflective Pulp – it being 30 years since they headlined Glastonbury at their Common People peak, and 27 since the harrowing morning-after comedown of This Is Hardcore. But there’s also a vibrational energy coursing through the album, exemplified by the dancefloor epiphany of Got To Have Love, and Cocker’s warning that “When love disappears/ Life disappears/ & you sit on your backside/ For 25 years.”
It chimes with something he told us in MOJO 380’s cover story, about the death of bassist Steve Mackey in 2023 being a kind of call to action rather than a reason to retreat: “When somebody important to you passes away, you can’t help but think about your own mortality and the fact that, if you are still alive, you have still got the ability to create things.”
If Pulp seem older and wiser – allbeit no less fun – now, they often seemed older and somewhat wiser than their Britpop peers in the 1990s. Cocker may be more reconciled to the Farmer’s Market rather than the celebrity meat markets, but there are still paeans to girls called ‘70s names like Tina (“Screwing in a charity shop/ On top of black bin bags”). Grown Ups, perhaps the best of a strong new batch of songs, is also a forensic investigation of the drawbacks of adult responsibility, with some of Cocker’s most quotable lyrics - “Life’s too short to drink bad wine” being the sort of mission statement most of us can probably get behind at this late date.
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READ MORE: Every Pulp Album Ranked!
Grown Ups sounds like a terrific cousin to New Order’s Sub-Culture and, critically, More is also a musical match for those 1990s Pulp classics. The Jarv Is band that backed Cocker on 2020’s excellent Beyond The Pale handily flesh out the Pulp lineup of Cocker, Nick Banks (drums), Candida Doyle (keys) and Mark Webber (guitar), while producer James Ford discreetly refreshes the kitchen-sink showstoppers and art-disco come-hithers; the sound of a piece with records like Different Class, but also pimped up a little to not jar on 2025 streaming playlists.
Predictably from a band fanatically attentive to the needs of their hardcore, there are plenty of easter eggs, so that Background Noise is not only reminiscent of Bad Cover Version, but also features Cocker musing “Don’t remember the first time”. More, though, is greater than the sum of its fan service parts - that rarest of reunion records, in fact: one that transcends nostalgia to actually enhance a band’s legacy.
More is out June 6 on Rough Trade.
ORDER: Amazon | Rough Trade
Track listing:
Spike Island
Tina
Grown Ups
Slow Jam
Farmers Market
My Sex
Got To Have Love
Background Noise
Partial Eclipse
The Hymn Of The North
A Sunset
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