Even when Pulp were knee-deep in kitchen-sink hedonism—chronicling sex in council flats and disco epiphanies with the wry glee of someone both repulsed and aroused by the whole affair—there was always something unusually grown-up about them. Maybe it was Jarvis Cocker’s lyrics, all Morrissey-style specificity without the self-pity. Maybe it was the music, which treated glam, disco, and synth-pop not as mere aesthetic choices, but as high cultural signifiers. With More, the band's first album in nearly 25 years, Pulp does what very few bands dare to do after such a hiatus: pick up as if no time has passed, but also acknowledge, quite movingly, that it very much has.
Thematically, More is about aging without necessarily growing up, and feeling older without being any closer to enlightenment. You get that right off the bat with “Grown-Ups,” a song so melodically immediate it feels like a standard you somehow forgot existed. Everything about it—the riff, the sentiment, the slightly smug self-awareness—feels very Pulp. It’s the kind of track that reminds you why this band became huge in the first place, and why their return feels both surprising and utterly logical.
What sets More apart, however, isn’t just nostalgia. It’s the new emotional tones Pulp manages to sneak in under their usual sparkle. There’s an undercurrent of grief here—most notably, the absence of bassist Steve Mackey, who died in 2023, is palpable even as the basslines themselves are unexpectedly prominent throughout. Perhaps as tribute, perhaps as defiance. Either way, they throb with life, most memorably on the lead single “Spike Island,” a song that marries bouncy bass, lewd guitars, and swelling synths to Jarvis’s ever-so-slightly crumbling falsetto. It’s the sound of a band rediscovering their pleasure in playing, melancholic but danceable, like a wake with glitter.
If More has a guiding thread, it’s Cocker’s voice—and all the voices within it. The sly whisperer, the declaiming crooner, the startled yelper: he’s as expressive as ever, perhaps even more so. There’s something of the English music hall tradition in the way he performs, not just sings, these tracks. On “Tina,” he gives us another of his classic female character studies, portraying her not with condescension but with an affectionate theatricality that’s part Brecht, part barstool confession. The dramatic impulse reaches its peak on “My Sex,” a slow-burning epic that simmers with ominous synths before exploding into “Got To Have Love,” a disco cousin to Different Class-era anthems. These two tracks, more than any others, show how Pulp still manages to conflate the mundane with the melodramatic—and make you dance to both.
As ever, the album is thick with vignettes of English life—its domestic squabbles, odd rituals, and provincial dramas. “Farmer’s Market” veers into Nick Cave territory, all theatrical menace and baritone swagger, while “The Hymn of the North”—featuring Chilly Gonzales—pays luminous homage to Scott Walker, Pulp’s eternal patron saint of the avant-garde croon. Elsewhere, “Background Noise” and “Partial Eclipse” offer cinematic ballads with sweeping synths and strings that evoke both romantic longing and existential shrug. There are moments when the synths begin to blur together, making one wish for a little more guitar snarl—a return to the glam edge that once cut through all the cleverness—but Pulp has always preferred suggestion over saturation.
The album ends, as it should, with “A Sunset.” It’s exquisite—built on a delicate guitar motif, slowly swelling with layered vocals, culminating in a climax that feels both earned and entirely understated. It’s the kind of ending that doesn’t scream finality but understands something about closure: that it’s less about punctuation and more about cadence.
More is not a reinvention, and it doesn’t try to be. It’s a continuation—sometimes weary, sometimes wicked, always literate. Familiar and English, yes, but never complacent. Pulp didn’t come back to prove anything; they came back to say something. And luckily for us, they still say it better than just about anyone else.
Genre: Pop/Rock
Release date: June 6th, 2025
Produced by: James Ford
Label: Rough Trade
Rating: 8/10
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