Pulp are my very favourite band. Different Classes is an absolutely cracking album. Sometimes, though, when your very favourite band records something new for the first time in a decade it can be disappointing. So when we heard that Pulp had recorded new (sort of new, it’s first appeared as a half-finished leaked demo around ten years ago) single ‘After You’ AND it’s as a collaboration with James Murphy there were mixed feelings. We didn’t want to get our hopes up.
But then we heard it, and it was beautiful.
This Christmas day release features the conversational, ingenious rhymes which have always been quintessential of Cocker’s lyrical style. Opening with “On the last night on earth when the horses run free / The scriptures foretell of a party in Hackney”, and proceeding to a chorus which combines both the Pulp of old with 21st Century British commercialism: “From disco to disco; from Safeway to Tesco.” ‘After You’ also features one of the best couplets about: “beauty” and “booty”. Pure gold indie pop. Jarvis and James just don’t disappoint.
Despite Cocker’s claims in 2012 in an interview with Q that there would be no new Pulp material, it seems the sneaky Sheffield group have managed to bypass the “new” bit by reviving the old. Murphy’s production move is clearly going very well, and 2013 will see lots of ‘produced by James Murphy’ tracks; we couldn’t be happier.
Maddie Russell
Dance Yrself Clean
