Goodness gracious, it's happening. After nearly a quarter century, we are about to get a new Pulp album. The clues were all there, and rumors have been floating around for some time, but now we know it's real. The greatest of all Britpop bands broke up shortly after the release of their 2001 album We Love Life. They have reunited twice -- first in 2012 and then again in 2023. During last year's North American tour, they debuted a number of new songs. More recently, they announced that they've signed to Rough Trade, and they're preparing to play a pair of Hollywood Bowl gigs with LCD Soundsystem, as well as some dates in the UK and Ireland. Now, Pulp are ready to officially announce that they've made a new album called More and that it'll be out in June.
Pulp recorded More with big-deal producer James Ford. It's dedicated to the memory of bassist Steve Mackey, who passed away in 2023. Opening track "Spike Island," which Pulp debuted live in Chicago last September, is the LP's lead single. Jarvis Cocker co-wrote the song with Jason Buckle, his partner in the short-lived electro duo Relaxed Muscle. It's inspired by the famous show that the Stone Roses played on the titular island in 1990. Buckle was there. Cocker was not, but he heard all the stories about the DJ who got on everybody's nerves by repeatedly yelling, "Spike Island, come alive!"
The "Spike Island" video is extremely funny. Cocker directed the clip, it features his attempts to use AI to reanimate the photos from Pulp's Different Class CD booklet. The results are nightmarish, and they effectively skewer the entire concept of the AI music video. Apparently, though, that skewering might've been unintentional. Here's what Cocker says about the video:
I was told that someone was interested in investigating AI & 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 AI 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."
And here's what Cocker says about about More:
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 soundchecks & 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 AI was involved during the process.
This album is dedicated to Steve Mackey.
This is the best that we can do.
Thanks for listening
Below, you will find the "Spike Island" video, the More tracklist, and Pulp's upcoming tour dates.
TRACKLIST:
01 "Spike Island"
02 "Tina"
03 "Grown Ups"
04 "Slow Jam"
05 "Farmers Market"
06 "My Sex"
07 "Got To Have Love"
08 "Background Noise"
09 "Partial Eclipse"
10 "The Hymn of the North"
11 "A Sunset"
TOUR DATES:
6/07 - Glasgow, UK @ OVO Hydro
6/10 - Dublin, Ireland @ 3Arena
6/13-14 - London, UK @ The O2
6/19 - Birmingham, UK @ Utilita Arena
6/21 - Manchester, UK @ Co-op Live
7/25 - Sheffield, UK @ Tramlines Festival
9/25-26 - Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl *
* with LCD Soundsystem
More is out 6/6 on Rough Trade.
