The exclamation mark feels a bit unnecessary, or does it? A musical institution yes, but after twenty odd years dormant, are Pulp the kind of get you out of yer seat, hearts in mouths type performers?
Some of answers lie in More, their renascent 2025 comeback album on which they looked at the fountain of youth but passed, instead wisely trusting that the audience which so dug His N’ Hers and Different Class has by and large aged disgracefully with them. Culled from two shows performed at London’s o2 arena, Live! takes on the notoriously difficult to satisfy problems of projecting both the familiar and the different; we want to be there, but we also want to know what we’re hearing too.
What’s apparent here though is how much the material from that brief, zeitgeisty commercial peak sounds like the work of another band. Sure, you can’t really go wrong with Disco 2000, Sorted for E’s & Wizz and Babies, but it’s hard to add much to them. The best moments here are instead the ones you might have gone for a wee during; A truly epic, eight minute This Is Hardcore, Sunrise. O.U. and the closer A Sunset are all angles from which the Pulp story looks very different, one that much better fits the outsider path they’ve walked for most of their career.
Is the exclamation mark necessary? Does it show that they’re still giving us a thrill? That all depends how you get your kicks. Live! is a celebration, a document, a wake or a postcard. Something that can be all those things is worthy of the right sort of punctuation, at the very least.
You can read a full review here.
The Voice Of Unreason 