Pulp announce huge comeback shows for 2023
And there's an intriguing Glastonbury-shaped hole in the Britpop icons' schedule.
By Nick Reilly
Pulp have confirmed a string of massive comeback dates for 2023, including an outdoor show at London’s Finsbury Park, as well as headline slots at Suffolk’s Latitude Festival and Glasgow’s TRNMST.
It comes after the Britpop icons, famously led by frontman Jarvis Cocker, confirmed plans to reunite earlier this year.
The group last played together in 2012, two years after they began a first reunion tour that took them to Glastonbury, Reading & Leeds and beyond.
Now, it’s been confirmed that they will kick off the tour in late May at Bridlington Spa, before travelling across the UK and Ireland that summer. Tickets go on sale here from 9AM on Friday November 4.
Interesting, there is also an intriguing Glastonbury-shaped hole in their schedule, with no dates appearing between a show at Dublin’s St Anne’s Park on June 9 and a massive date with 45,000 fans at London’s Finsbury Park on Saturday July 1.
As things stand, this means the band are seemingly free to head down to Worthy Farm on the final weekend of June. They memorably performed a secret set on the Park Stage in 2011, while also delivering a last minute headline set for the ages when the Stone Roses pulled out in 1995.
Announcing the shows, Jarvis Cocker said: “Three months ago, we asked, What exactly do you do for an encore?” Well, an encore happens when the crowd makes enough noise to bring the band back to the stage. So…we are playing in the UK & Ireland in 2023. Therefore, come along & make some noise.See you there.”
Cocker initially confirmed the reunion during a talk hosted by The Guardian about his upcoming memoir Good Pop, Bad Pop, revealing the group will play the gigs to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their album This Is Hardcore.
In the aftermath of the comments, Pulp drummer Nick Banks also confirmed the news, asking fans to “stay calm” and await further details of the gigs.
“Hey folks, unsurprisingly it’s all gone a bit mental on here,” he wrote. “Gig details will be revealed as and when.”
Banks added: “Stay calm, hug your Pulp records and dream of going mental sometime in 2023.”
Pulp’s last new music came with 2012 single ‘After You’, which was produced by LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy and arrived just after the band played the final gig of their reunion tour in their hometown of Sheffield.
In a 2020 interview with The Creative Independent, Cocker said the band’s reunion shows “brought that chapter [of Pulp] to a satisfying end,” adding: “I thought it was pretty much a perfect tour, really; and that was a good end to that. But then I just had to try and think about what I would do after that.”
Since then, Cocker has formed the band JARV IS…, who released debut album Beyond the Pale in 2020.