Pulp are back for More. The Britpop maestros, whose influence surpassed the 1990s scene and cast a spell on indie-pop for decades to come, will return with their follow-up to 2001’s We Love Life on June 6. More, out via their new label home, Rough Trade, was recorded at London’s Orbb Studio over three weeks of November 2024 with producer James Ford. “This is the shortest amount of time a Pulp album has ever taken to record,” Jarvis Cocker wrote in a statement. “It was obviously ready to happen.” Watch the video for the single “Spike Island,” directed by Cocker himself, below.
The video, said Cocker in a press release, is an inquiry into artificial intelligence via the repurposing of Rankin & Donald’s photographs from the Different Class inlay. He fed the pictures into an A.I. app to “see where the computer led” him, typing in prompts such as, “The black & white figure remains still whilst the bus in the background drives off.” He added, “The weekend I began work on the video was a strange time: I went out of the house & kept expecting weird transformations of the surrounding environment due to the images the computer had been generating. The experience had marked me. I don’t know whether I’ve recovered yet…..” He concluded, “My final thought? H.I. Forever!”
More features contributions from Richard Hawley and Jason Buckle, who composed music for one song apiece, as well as the Eno family, who sing backing vocals on one song. Richard Jones arranged strings for the Elysian Collective to perform.
Of the album, Cocker added:
This is the first Pulp album since “We Love Life” in 2001. Yes: the first Pulp album for 24 years.
How did that happen?
Well: when we started touring again in 2023, we practiced a new song called “Hymn of the North” during soundchecks & eventually played it at the end of our second night at Sheffield Arena. This seemed to open the floodgates: we came up with the rest of the songs on this album during the first half of 2024. A couple are revivals of ideas from last century. The music for one song was written by Richard Hawley. The music for another was written by Jason Buckle. The Eno family sing backing vocals on a song. There are string arrangements written by Richard Jones & played by the Elysian Collective.
The album was recorded over 3 weeks by James Ford in Walthamstow, London, starting on November 18th, 2024. This is the shortest amount of time a Pulp album has ever taken to record. It was obviously ready to happen.
https://pitchfork.com/news/pulp-return-with-first-album-in-24-years-share-new-song-spike-island-listen
