PULP 'It' (Red Rhino RED LP 29) ****
A BRAVE attempt to make this year's cult album, 'It' finally fails because it puts style above content.
The four stars are there as a sign of how close the attempt came to being successful and how much worth there still is in 'It' to be sought out by late night soft-rock local radio stations and, if they want a hit, by big record companies with the suss to take over 'It' and make it into a hit album.
That dreadful title on what is almost a remarkable album seems to tell the central tale. Pulp - from Sheffield and seemingly the guise for one person, Jarvis Cocker — go so far to successfully recreate and, more importantly, overtake the soft rock of a Simon And Garfunkel or a Mamas And Papas (same production) or, at their best, a Crazy Horse - but so far only.
Twenty-per-cent of the Pulp album is full of mistakes; if that had been just ten-per-cent, say, those mistakes could have been seen as the flaws necessary to a classic. It's that close a contest between the attempt to make your actual '83 soft rock easy listening album that is not a wimp and actually has teeth that tear at your heart, and letting a slight nervousness perhaps spoil the whole thing.
'It'... I can't even bear to call it that! The Pulp Album is all worthy 'classic songwriting' in the Jimmy Webb/aforementioned artists mould. The first track 'My Lighthouse' has a light soaring feel about it that is truly wonderful - it's the single from the album and as I say, would stand ably side by side with Garfunkel or Joel on a good late-night station.
Things seem to get gradually worse from there on. 'Wishful Thinking', the next track, is powerful Neil Young circa 'Harvest' but this is, in effect, all you get. Henceforth, Pulp meander a little and introduce a flute which is disastrous and pompous-sounding; it introduces a note of eccentricity to the affair that rather lowers Pulp's ambitions overall.
By the second side, what was pleasant and almost moving has become airy fairy. Jarvis Cocker's voice cracks up, doesn't move you on 'Blue Girls' as it needs to, and a whole barrage of instrumentalists take over and crowd round Jarvis when he should have been left alone with his piano, moving you.
Instead, you are finally given a kind of celebration of The Sixties Singer Songwriting Greats. Pulp, by the end, are floating on a bed of sumptuous nostalgic airy fairyness that satisfies a bit but does not claw at your heart.
Perhaps the reality — that it's well nigh impossible to make an easy listening introspective LP in a country ready for riots and needful of loud guitars — finally got to Pulp. Even then, 'It' is worthy of sustained bargain-bin hunting.
DAVE McCULLOUGH
