Pulp ‘More’ review: A triumphant comeback from Britpop titans

When Pulp signed to Rough Trade Records in December last year — after being managed by the label for three decades — it was clear that something significant was on the way. And when Jarvis Cocker was spotted pottering around Walthamstow earlier this summer, he was only too happy to tell obliging locals that they were in the trendy east London hotspot to record new music.

Now, the fruits of their labour have finally arrived in the form of More, which marks the first album from the Sheffield icons in 24 years. But after all that time away from being a recording band, the question remains: is their new music worth listening to?

The answer, quite thankfully, is an absolute yes. For the most part, this is a record where stadium-filling songs, the kind that elevated Pulp to household fame in the 90s, sit alongside the deeper and more curious oddities for which the band are known. It’s a return that has proved well worth waiting for.

As for those anthems, the record launches with ‘Spike Island’ — which cleverly uses the nostalgia of people looking back at the location of that famous Stone Roses gig as a framing device for evaluating the band’s own 90s highs. “I was born to perform, it’s a calling / I exist to do this — shouting and pointing,” Cocker eventually concludes, sounding more emboldened and enthusiastic than ever.

It’s a similar case on ‘Got to Have Love’, a 70s disco-flecked beast which transforms into an all-out banger and is among the best songs the group has ever made. It starts with what appears to be Cocker offering a personal paean to the power of opening your heart, before it seemingly becomes an ode to the precise reasons why the band have returned to music.

“You sit on your backside for 25 years, and you edge your bets, twist and bust and try and fail and work on an album and go to jail / All the time, hiding from the one thing that could save you.” In other words, Pulp’s return was a vital decision.

As for those trademark oddities, they’re ever present in the slow, slinking ‘My Sex’ — which feels destined to be filed alongside ‘Underwear’ in conjuring the feeling — intentional or not — that the listener has wandered in and witnessed something they shouldn’t have. It’s done here through Cocker’s low baritone croon and the 70s porn film-esque instrumentals that form the song’s backbone.

And on the emotional closer ‘A Sunset’, Cocker posits: “Oh, I’d like to teach the world to sing / But the world has lost its voice.” That might increasingly be the case during these dark days of late, but that voice is sure to grow stronger when Pulp — almost a quarter of a century after their last album — are creating records like More. Here’s hoping they take up the mantra of this album title and run with it. We can’t wait another 25 years when the results are as good as this