Pulp
OVO Hydro, Glasgow, Saturday June 7, 2025
“I was born to perform, it’s a calling. I exist to do this: shouting and pointing.” We’re only one song into the first night of Pulp’s UK arena tour and Jarvis Cocker is already reminding everyone here that this is what he does better than most.
That the pulsating Spike Island is a disco-flecked banger that can sturdily hold its own when measured against anything from the band’s mid-90’s commercial zenith is a bonus and a relief. This and the six other songs played from More, the group’s first album in 24 years, offer ample proof that Pulp can seemingly absorb anything that’s thrown at them and come back smiling, if a little self-reflective.
When Pulp first returned after a nine-year hiatus in 2011, they provided one new song but basically kept things nostalgic. This time around, what they’ve done for - yet another - encore has changed. Speaking to MOJO in April, Cocker revealed they were given fresh impetus to go back into the studio after the death of bass player Steve Mackey in 2023 . “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,” reflected the singer. This extra helping of new music, released the day before tonight’s show, is an unexpected but very welcome twist to their long, unpredictable and hugely eventful story.
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The extended 22-song ‘special performance’ is split by an interval (although even with that breather Cocker has to have a lie down a couple of times). There are certainly echoes of the past in the More material, which comes as little surprise as much of it had been written a while ago and has been spruced up and repurposed. The rollicking Grown Ups dates back to 1998 (and even has a co-write for Mackey). The wistful Farmers Market, which Cocker wrote about meeting his wife, shares its Scott Walker obsession with Pulp’s most romantic moment Something Changed. The latter kicks off the second set, a poignant, stripped-down acoustic version featuring just the core remaining Pulp members of Cocker, keyboard player Candida Doyle, guitarist Mark Webber and drummer Nick Banks. They also indicate that among the plentiful witty observations and the sensual overload of lasers, confetti, streamers and light-up dancefloors that there’s a lot of heart in there. The recent proclamations from Cocker that he’s been finding it easier to put across his own feelings in song continue to percolate on the blissful Got To Have Love, with his forthright declaration that “when love disappears, life disappears”. He also revisits playing the seedy voyeur, but it’s with a kind of shrug, when he recalls sheepishly fantasising over the titular Tina for some 40 years, with its references to charity shops, Digestive biscuits and her “T-shirt with the horizontal stripes”. In another nod to old times, Cocker introduces the brittle funk of Slow Jam by giving a shoutout to the old Sheffield nightclub Limit (which he uncharitably describes as a “toilet”).
But generally, we’re a respectful and age-appropriate distance away from the grubby machinations and sexual frustrations afoot in Do You Remember The First Time? and Babies, although both of course are received joyously like filthy old friends.
In a further bid to freshen things up, a few deep cuts have been revived, including the glam-shackle pop of 1993’s OU (Gone, Gone), This Is Hardcore’s weirdly anthemic post-fame paranoia fable The Fear (replete with eerie inflatables) and, perhaps most surprisingly, the buoyant His ’N’ Hers era B-side Seconds, which ousts Dishes in a cheerometer-judged fan vote during the interval. In another nod to the passing of time, Cocker wryly urges the crowd to assist him on reaching the high note in the chorus of 1997 single Help the Aged. That they so lustily knuckle down to this task indicates that the years have been kind to a song that had been considered something of a letdown upon its release. But then, the outsiders and weirdos Cocker sings about on a buoyant Mis-Shapes and a cursorily brilliant Common People will always have his back.
Tonight serves as an apt reminder of why Pulp are so cherished. This feels like a band reborn. As Cocker told MOJO last month, “nothing ever really ends”. Like the man said, it’s his reason to exist.
Set List:
SET 1
Spike Island
Grown Ups
Slow Jam
Sorted for E’s and Wizz
Disco 2000
F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.
Help The Aged
Tina
Farmers Market
This is Hardcore
Sunrise
SET 2
Something Changed
The Fear
O.U. (Gone, Gone)
Seconds
Acrylic Afternoons
Do You Remember the First Time?
Mis-Shapes
Got to Have Love
Babies
Common People
A Sunset
Picture: Pulp at London's Finsbury Park, July 2023 (Credit: Getty/Matthew Baker)