Speaking in the latest issue of MOJO, Jarvis Cocker and Pulp have spoken about the making of the band’s surprise new album More, and whether there might be further new music to come.
Since 2023, Pulp – Cocker, guitarist Mark Webber, keyboardist Candida Doyle and drummer Nick Banks – have been playing live, the line-up augmented by musicians from Cocker’s most recent solo vehicle Jarv Is.
While this has been Pulp’s second reunion tour since they called it a day in 2002, earlier this month Pulp announced that a brand-new album had been recorded and would be out June 6 on Rough Trade. While speaking to the band for this month’s world exclusive cover interview, MOJO was granted a listen to the record.
Their first since 2002’s Scott Walker-produced We Love Life, More is – to MOJO’s ears - what many Pulp fans have been waiting for since 1995’s chart-topping Different Class: a restatement of their founding virtues as a pop group, with age-appropriate but still penetrating narratives, an abundance of tunes and a renewed sense of purpose.
As recently as spring last year, members of the band had publicly stated that that with the group now into their 60s, the time constraints of heading back into the studio to work on a full set of songs from Cocker was something none of them had discussed, or were particularly keen on.
MOJO put it to Cocker and the band what forced the change of heart…
“I’d written this song Hymn Of The North which I thought was all right,” the singer tells MOJO’s Ian Harrison, “so we tried it out in sound checks and we played it at the Hammersmith Odeon and I dunno, it just felt good… so I thought, well, let’s see how far we can take that.”
Other new songs were added to the setlist. A Sunset, co-written by Cocker and former auxiliary Pulp member Richard Hawley, had been debuted in 2022 at a benefit for the Sheffield venue The Leadmill. More tracks Background Noise and Slow Jam, meanwhile, were among songs played live by Jarv Is. After some rehearsals and song development with the original Pulp members and the expanded ensemble, they went to Arctic Monkeys/Depeche Mode producer James Ford’s East London studio in August 2024 to cut lead single Spike Island (sample lyric: “I was born/ To perform/ It’s a calling”). Following a break for lyric-writing, they returned in November.
“We were finished in three weeks!” reports Cocker. “Quickest ever. We were quite ready.” He was pleased, he says, with fantasy girlfriend song Tina and its imaginary liaison “screwing in a charity shop/ On top of black bin bags/ Full of donations/ The smell of digestive biscuits in the air.” Although he adds he hasn’t set foot in a charity shop for a decade.
While More’s players include Jarv Is collaborators Emma Smith on violin and bassist Andrew McKinney, the core of Cocker, Banks, Doyle and Webber impart an undeniable Pulpness.
“You’re working with people that you’ve known for most of your life,” says Cocker. “We have our abilities and inabilities, our quirks, and in the end, it’s that combination that make it something with a personality. Once those things are happening, it starts to sound like Pulp.”
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Banks does admit to “eye rolling” when the idea of recording came up.
“Candida said, ‘Jarvis is going to create and write songs no matter what we do. So we might as well be involved, and therefore it will be a Pulp record,’” he recalls. “Pulp has always mutated and now it’s mutated again. I still don’t know really why Pulp are doing a record in 2025, but we have! As I always say, if you do nothing, nothing happens. If you do something, something happens.”
One missing member of Pulp’s classic line-up is bassist and Cocker’s close creative foil Steve Mackey, who died after suffering three AVM brain bleeds on March 2, 2023.
“I hope Steve would be pleasantly surprised that we’ve managed to do it,” says Cocker. “I’m sure that him not being around had a lot to do with the record. It was a spur in some ways. 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.”
For Cocker, music, and the desire to keep playing and to create, is the thing that keeps calling him back.
“I’ve attempted to retire many times,” he says. “It didn’t last. Music is kind of a magical thing, you know. When I sing those old songs, when you manage to inhabit the song again, it unlocks it. Some people might say it’s nostalgia, but it seems more potent to me. You’re tapping back into the energy of what you felt, and it comes back to life. And Pulp… I don’t expect it to cure me, or anything, now. I think that makes it a much more pleasurable thing all around. I’m just happy that we managed to make a record that moves me.”
MOJO wonders if he can envisage making another Pulp record after More?
“It wasn’t conceived as, Right, this is our grand full stop. But it might be. Or it might be more of a comma – a grand comma,” he says. “Because y’know, nothing ever really ends…”
“Pulp has always mutated and now it’s mutated again…”
Get the latest issue of MOJO to read Pulp’s first interview in 23 years and find out the full inside story behind More; their wilderness years in indie rocks arty fringes; their career breaking headline slot at Glastonbury in 1994; *that* incident with Michael Jackson at the Brits, Britpop comedowns and, er, more. Plus! Get your hands on an exclusive CD of unreleased Pulp songs curated especially for MOJO by Pulp themselves. More info HERE!
Photo: Tom Jackson