The title of Pulp’s eighth album nods with deadpan northern brevity at this unexpected third act in the Sheffield band’s long history – but also at an expanded, saturated, heightened version of a group that drew its recording career to a halt 24 years ago with the Scott Walker-produced We Love Life.
The remaining members of Pulp – Nick Banks, Jarvis Cocker, Candida Doyle and Mark Webber – are joined on this varied and moving record by personnel from Cocker’s Jarv Is side project. A string section doesn’t merely add knee-jerk gravitas, but amps up the disco swirl of the northern soul stomper Got to Have Love, or the 60s chanson of Tina, where it’s paired with a classic Cocker lyric about an unrequited hang-up. My Sex comes to a delightful head with a coda of Cocker exhaling, and girl group backing vocals that sound like the numbers of a frisky hotline, but are really DNA code.
Everywhere there is evolution, not least in how Cocker grapples with the old loves he has let slip through his fingers – Background Noise, Slow Jam – and the possibility of doing things differently (Farmers Market). Throughout, James Ford’s production and Cocker’s insights make this as good a Pulp record as anyone has any right to wish for in 2025.
More by Pulp is released on Rough Trade
Photograph by Tom Jackson