Candy livers
“You are hardcore, I am hardcore, everything is hardcore…This is hardcore”. Jarvis Cocker illustrated like this the return of Pulp for a series of concerts. The expected return was the 28th of May at the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona, ten years after the publication of their latest We Love Life (Island Records, 2001) and at the same festival that Pulp had left the stage the same year. They also had the most ever celebrated Pulp formation: Steve Mackey, Russell Senior (after fifteen years out of the band), Mark Webber, Nick Banks, Candida Doyle and an ebullient and elegant Jarvis Cocker. Really hardcore.
In the late seventies Jarvis Cocker formed Pulp with Peter Dalton when he was just a teenager. Their first steps marked a major musical eclecticism getting some local recognition that led them to record a Peel Session in 1981. Such sound recordings pointed them near The Human League, very in the New Wave post punk trend. They released a first EP titled It (Red Rihno Records, 1983) with a surprising folk twist close to Leonard Cohen and without any commercial or artistic impact, rather an amateur work. Then, the band decided to change their formation and hardened and darkened their sound developing a new proposal that would end in Freaks (Fire, 1987), the darkest album in the history of the band but also very erratic. Only I want you has remained in their later live performances. They didn’t release another album until five years later, Separations (Fire, 1992), during the heyday of grunge movement. In that album we found the best known Pulp sound, a fusion of pop, dance and rock, including acid house, and great songs like My Legendary Girlfriend, sung by Jarvis Cocker’s splendid voice.
Then came His 'n' Hers (Island Records, 1994) with such classics songs as Do you remember the first time or Razzmatazz. Pulp’s proposal had come as the most eclectic and elegant one in the new Brit Pop trend and they caressed its crown with Different Class (Island, 1995) that included their great hymn Common People. "I want to live like common people, I want to do whatever common people do, I want to sleep with common people like you." Contradictory song sung by who had hardly sought commercial success without renouncing, I admit, creativity. This Is Hardcore (Island, 1998) presented bitter lyrics surrounded by neon lights “Put your money where your mouth is tonight. Leave your make-up on and I'll leave on the light”.Surely the creative peak of a convulsive band that left us the fear portrayed with lines “This is the sound of someone losing the plot/you're gonna like it, but not a lot.” The fear probably made this album became their best work. Then Pulp entered at the beginning of the end of a career full of reversals and formation changes. We love life (Islands, 2001), their last album, was more a tear than a true statement.
“Can I ask you something? Are you high? ...You can be high on drugs, booze or even life. Are you high?” Jarvis Cocker walked exuberant on stage. His opening “Shall we do it?” soon turned in ecstasy because of the return on tour of a band that created candy livers without losing any point of elegance.
Text by Juan Carlos Romero
Photos courtesy of Primavera Sound, second photo by Inma Varandela