The history of the pulp is marked by a big misunderstanding. For Sheffield's band, success represented more a path accident than a point of arrival. In this vision almost Bohémiennethe artistic identity of Jarvis Cocker and members appears to be much stronger than it may seem, therefore it is not surprising that the return on stage after 24 years of silence catalyzes the media attention like an emerging band.
Therefore, be careful to attribute the charm of “more” to a simple nostalgia effect: these new eleven songs are more similar to those twenty -year blooms observable in some varieties of wisteria, peonies, birch, pine or plane trees, a natural event that not only arouses emotion and enchantment, but which also assumes a functional role for the continuation of the species, of life and art.
The eighth pulp record is a project with attention to and fed with love and dedication. This is evident in the always acute texts, the result of a life spent in the name of the grace of narrative art: “This time I will succeed”, sings Jarvis in “Spike Island”, and then ask for himself in “Grown Ups” a last flicker of youth and emotional fertility: “hurry up because with sex, time is about to expire”.
Even the florilege of romanticism of “Tina” has nothing conventional, yet another perfect story of feelings pending an answer, a chamber-pop that refers to the desired commercial suicide of “We love life”, sumptuous and musically ambitious album, where the king of romanticism noirScott Walker, acted not only as a producer but as a new Virgil, ready to support Jarvis/Dante in crossing the hell of the post-Britpop disillusions, without however reaching the peaks of “13” of the Blur.
Musically, “More” is a rich sample of what the pulps have always been able to do at best. Once again the close link between lyrical and musical content is the winning weapon of the English group. Already from the first notes of the single “Spike Island” there is a creative exuberance where Glam, discpop and rock coexist with an almost tailored elegance, a condensate of fantasy and realism that puts the entire project bare: “I was born to perform, it is a vocation, I exist to do this”.
“More” is a luxurious album, but never harmful. A pop jewel like “Got to Have Love” confirms Pulp's ability in reconciling happiness and resignation with the right rate of dramaturgy and awareness, that same awareness that shakes the most soul movements as “Background noise”, a wise reflection on the inevitable evanescence of feelings: “With the passing of the years, love turns into a background noise, like this buzz in my ears, of a refrigerator, you only notice it when it disappears “.
With a skilled theatrical and musical twist, the Pulps have returned to being a group, with a leader, but a hundred percent group (it is not a reunion Infruttifera as that of 2011). Everything was pleasantly unchanged: the breath/sigh of the arches, the sparkle of keyboards and guitars put in polish, the perfect rhythmic times for an evening disc And even the cascades of violin notes, which do not regret the absence of Russell Senior.
However, it is not a predictable album, “More”. The elegant Piano Ballad In time of waltz of “Farmers Market” it is atypical, almost songwriting, a narrative counterbalance to the famous “Common People”, while the painful “The Hymn of the North” succeeds in the difficult undertaking of realizing the missing dream of “We Love Life”, or highlighting the strong bond with the poetics of Scott Walker.
The typically pulp jewels are not lacking, in addition to the aforementioned “Spike Island” and “Got to Have Love”, there are the sensual and pungent intuitions of “Slow Jam”, the sweatshirts yet incendiariars glam-funk.disc of the irresistible “My Sex”, and the unworthy romanticism of the beautiful, yes simply beautiful, “partial eclipse”.
The last trace of the disc was not only composed together with Richard Hawley, but also makes use of the presence of five members of the Eno family, including Brian, who is responsible for the role of secular choir in a minimal musical context, where the voice in the foreground, the bitter sound of the violin and a faint harmonic body merge for a thrilling ending. And it is somewhat revealing that the last song of “More” is titled “a Sunset” (a sunset), almost an answer to the “Sunrise” (the dawn) that closed the hostilities of “We Love Life”.
If the intention of the pulps was to show us that the last chapter of their history has not yet been written, it must be noted that they have managed to perfectly and that they can count on a third family jewel to be delivered to posterity.
08/06/2025
Antonio Santini for SANREMO.FM
