More
By Pulp
The July issue of the British “dad-rock” magazine Mojo reviews new albums by Sparks (debut album 1971), Doobie Brothers, Van Morrison and, inevitably, yet another Neil Young.
In this context Pulp – formed late 1970s, breaking through in the 1990s Britpop era with their Different Class album and hit single Common People – seem like upstarts.
Their rise was slow, the end quick. Just two more studio albums.
But it seems Pulp were simply on an extended sabbatical. More, their first studio album in 24 years, finds some of the old gang (and others from frontman Jarvis Cocker’s Jarv Is band) back together, with songwriter Cocker singing, “I was born to perform, it’s a calling. I exist to do this,” on the anthemic Spike Island, a nod to where the Stone Roses played their game-changing 1990 show and helped birth Britpop and Oasis.
There’s an infectious, spirited yearning on the disco-driven Got to Have Love, uplifting melodrama in Tina (with Cocker’s customary observational detail of “matching socks”) and the moving spoken ballad Farmers Market about a chance encounter with an old flame: “We thought we were just joking, trying dreams on for size. We never thought we’d be stuck with them for the rest of our natural lives.”
Cocker – now 61 and looking even more the rumpled associate professor – was always the mature figure of Britpop (though only a few years older than Noel Gallagher and Blur’s Damon Albarn) so is perfectly placed to sing the cynical Grown Ups about adulthood: making responsible decisions, moving to a better neighbourhood and desperately aching to escape it all.
With subtle and quirky funk (Slow Jam), the sound of Peter Gabriel going sleazy (My Sex) and Cocker’s heartfelt emotions (The Hymn of the North) alongside more lacerating observations (A Sunset), Pulp are back on top form, resurrecting the 1990s.
More delivers the promise of its title.
Strawberries
By Robert Forster
Brisbane’s great musical export, the Go-Betweens, had a rare convergence of songwriters in Robert Forster and the late Grant McLennan, both refined craftsmen of the literary persuasion.
Forster – who wrote an insightful 2016 autobiography Grant & I: Inside and Outside the Go-Betweens – named one of his first groups the Godots, “the band you’ve been waiting for”.
This ninth solo album from the astute 67-year-old looks back on love and loss. Pithy lines ring out: “Fresh love is good love” on the pop-chime opener Tell It Back To Me; “no two stories are same and love can be a winning game, but no two lovers are the same,” in the acoustic story of Breakfast on the Train. Foolish I Know has a lonely gay man yearning for his straight friend: “I like him but there’s just one catch.”
Forster roars in the Velvet Underground/For What It’s Worth shuffle of Diamonds, but mostly strips to the bone: Such a Shame is a sardonic reflection on his career: “It’s a funny game … you can’t erase older days till better ones arrive.”
Strawberries is sweet and tart and, like the equally lanky and lyrically detailed Cocker, Forster is an adult in the room.
These albums are available digitally, on vinyl and CD.
