While there have been a few live performances and the odd single and solo work, the venerable Pulp today announce the release of their first album in 24 years, fittingly entitled ‘More’. The original line-up (sadly of course without bass player Stephen Mackey who died in 2023) with extra musicians on board will release the album on 6 June 2025 through Rough Trade/Remote Control Records.
As a taste of what’s to expect, the single ‘Spike Island’ (home to a legendary Stone Roses gig) is out today and it has all the arched, studied pose and anthemic qualities you could expect from what I consider to be the best band out of the Britpop era.
A throbbing bass and scything guitars over a synth bed, with Jarvis Cocker’s signatory sardonic style and witty lyrics feature along with the anthemic chorus. An obligatory spoken interlude and a few grunts and yelps along the way captures the band at its very best. It is so very good to have them back.
The track comes with a Cocker developed AI video that is surreal and twisted and Cocker, in his inimitable style, says of the video:
I was told that someone was interested in investigating A.I. & did I have any ideas?
The first idea I had was to animate the photographs that Rankin & Donald took for Different Class: after all, back in 1995 they had been an “artificial” way of dropping us into real-life situations & getting an album cover done whilst we were too busy recording the music for that album to pose for pictures. No brainer.
It was my initial idea to produce a kind of “making of” video that showed how the photos had come to be taken – but as soon as I fed the first shot into the A.I. app I realised that wasn’t going to happen. So I decided to “go with the flow” & see where the computer led me.
All the moving images featured in the video are the result of me feeding in a still image & then typing in a “prompt” such as: “The black white figure remains still whilst the bus in the background drives off” which led to the sequence where the coach weirdly slides towards the cut-out of me.
The weekend I began work on the video was a strange time: I went out of the house & kept expecting weird transformations of the surrounding environment due to the images the computer had been generating. The experience had marked me. I don’t know whether I’ve recovered yet…
I have to thank Julian House for some expert post-production work & Rankin & Donald Milne for allowing me to use their work in this way. As it says in text at the end of the video, I think what they did for Pulp back in 1995 was “Human Intelligence at its best”. My final thought? H.I. Forever!
The result is so very Pulp:
‘Spike Island’ is out now and available to download and stream here.
Cocker says of the forthcoming album:
This is the first Pulp album since We Love Life in 2001. Yes: the first Pulp album for 24 years.
How did that happen?
Well: when we started touring again in 2023, we practiced a new song called ‘Hymn of the North’ during sound checks & eventually played it at the end of our second night at Sheffield Arena. This seemed to open the floodgates: we came up with the rest of the songs on this album during the first half of 2024. A couple are revivals of ideas from last century. The music for one song was written by Richard Hawley.
The music for another was written by Jason Buckle.
The Eno family sing backing vocals on a song. There are string arrangements written by Richard Jones & played by the Elysian Collective.
The album was recorded over 3 weeks by James Ford in Walthamstow, London, starting on November 18th, 2024. This is the shortest amount of time a Pulp album has ever taken to record. It was obviously ready to happen.
These are the facts.
We hope you enjoy the music. It was written & performed by four human beings from the North of England, aided & abetted by five other human beings from various locations in the British Isles. No A.I. was involved during the process.
This album is dedicated to Steve Mackey.
This is the best that we can do. Thanks for listening.
‘More’ can be pre-ordered through the link below and here.
Feature Photograph: Tom Jackson
