If you go down to the woods today, be sure of a big surprise. Or even Sheffield for that matter. With leafy shadow all a flicker and the crunch of braken under foot, Will Jenkins reports back on Pulp’s pine-fest UK comeback.
17/06/2002
Walking through the neatly arranged Pine forest towards the natural amphitheatre where the concert was to be held, traipsing behind all the other fans and teens intent on cheap lager and a brief flirtation behind the trees, I thought of no more apposite environment for Sheffield’s Pulp to play in. Songs for the polite and sexually restrained.
We Love Life has been described as the group’s swansong for Jarvis’s interests of sleaze and comeuppance for the self-assured. The pre-determined retirement of Pulp for the press is more because of the age of the band’s members. Cocker himself is 38 and with an increasing time spent between albums, there is a sense not that the group will announce an end, but will come to a fitting close, ceasing to exist.
This idea is most noticeable in the time lapse between launching the last album and committing themselves not only to a tour but one with an attendant idea behind it. Nearly eight months have passed and now the band has just prised themselves out of their abodes to pop in to our backyard for a bit of a sing-song. Sheffield’s Pulp is now a band comfortable enough not to flog a dead horse, rather tame a tired old cat with a carpet beater.
Although the easy reference points for Pulp this time around and their new excellent ream of songs is of supposedly Jarvis getting back to nature. Once past this nothing is further from what has always been there – the perennial obsession with sex, urban malaise, seedy personalities and a dilapidated urban environment. I’m not grumbling, the sex, soft drugs and car parks are what many of us who bought late into Pulp with Different Class still revel in, even when Pulp has added a hint of apple blossom aroma.
The hormonal flesh rampage barely suppressed by good manners walking around me is definitely an interest of Cocker’s and it works so well, directly feeding back into the people who buy his records and attend his concerts. It may sound creepy that a man of his esteemed age is still interested in the adolescent frustrations of compromised sex, but this is so much of the appeal to the pierced, young and beautiful turning up this evening. And when it comes to such matters any way, we can all continue to act as if ensconced behind the bike sheds with a bottle of poppers and Samantha from the History class. Nothing is more heady than a bottle of 20/20 and amour.
When making it on-stage Jarvis steps backwards in to the glare of the stage lights underneath a green parka. Not fools are we when the rest of the band just saunter on without having to announce themselves, Cocker has always been the object of fascination, so why shouldn’t he shroud himself before the screams? Milk that adulation.
Starting with ‘Trees’, just to strengthen the point, Pulp you begin to realise is a group that has retained quality. Whilst Blur aim to be taken seriously by exploring the preserve of the Can buying minority and Oasis lapsed in to self-parody by the time everyone noticed Liam had hairy knuckles. Pulp the other major group of Brit-pop has survived with sales and justified admiration. Jarvis and cohorts may not have the same prostrate number of apostles praising louche lifestyles; instead they have not had to sacrifice making good stuff in favour of the Met bar. All this was avoided by Jarvis’s one man mission to revel in his celebrity once it was won and jettisoned it when it left him dissatisfied, so the fans do not praise cocaine consumption and stick to the awkward and charming personality that he is.
The songs played tonight play out a career handsomely erected. ‘Bad Cover Version’ fits well in to the wardrobe alongside ‘Something’s Changed’ and ‘Babies’. ‘Birds in Your Garden’ dons Pulp in the garb of the mentioned sexual intrigue but the bike shed has now become an adult’s bedroom. While ‘Sunrise’ is a shock to find Pulp, one of the heirs to Morrissey and Marr’s parochial England, releasing themselves from meticulous written pop and venturing in to a guitar raga, playing out a Verve rock coda.
Pulp has refreshed in this way, not completely turning away from the glam-stomp of their mid-nineties incarnation, I Love Life’ retains the T-Rex speed of His and Hers. Yet the extra touches as when ‘Common People’ has now been altered, performed to aspire to Kraftwerk, shows that the band may not be around indefinitely but Pulp will not leave people with the horror of seeing a once great group churning out the old numbers at Butlins for the blue rinse brigade. Hopefully Pulp will be playing material to a wizened audience at the Conference for Memories of Cheap Drink and Quick Gropes.
Will Jenkins for Crud Magazine © 2002
Setlist
The Trees
Sorted For E’s & Wizz
Weeds
Bad Cover Version
The Birds in Your Garden
Live Bed Show
F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.
Help the Aged
This is Hardcore
I Love Life
Sunrise
Little Girl (With Blue Eyes)
Joyriders
Babies
Something Changed
Common People
