Reviews
Sharon O'Connell in Melody Maker:
To hell with careful qualification, Pulp are magic and Jarvis Cocker is a star.
Pulp have a curiously hybrid funky drive behind a dozen excellent pop tunes, imagination and wit enough to have invented pretty much their own aesthetic, and the good grace to want to slap a smile on every face in the place. You might want to argue that the music's been recycled, but if it has been, this is style with its handle-bars bent and the front wheel thrown away, careering off on its own favourite nostalgia trip and knocking off Barry White, Isaac Hayes and the golden days of The Human League on the way.
From tonight's opener, the stylophone-led instrumental "Space", to the gloriously cheesy Brighton pier-style keyboards that bleep and bubble throughout, and the appearance of a violin sound fit to grace any fifth-rate Romanian hotel dining room, you gather that, sure, Pulp are taking the piss. But it's out of the idea of performance, of the corny glamour of the whole showbiz thing, not out of the music itself. Pulp are not a bunch of cabaret clods with a fondness for the kitsch and the campily cute, they write damned fine pop songs which they choose to deliver with a nicely mocking sense of occasion.
They are led in this by Jarvis, a man whose sartorial sense is as stunning as his impeccable taste in techno-pop. Fascinatingly thin, he is dressed tonight in a fake denim bomber jacket with cutaway sheepskin lapels, and swivels dramatically about in perfect groin-jutting parody of every lurv god who ever whispered seduction down a mike. Except that with song titles like "Separation", "Love Is Blind" and "Don't You Want Me Anymore", Jarvis marks himself as something of an Aberfan mining disaster in the field of sexual relationships.
Pulp-appeal is undeniable, though, and there's a Lushette grooving down the front, so there must be something in it, right?
Steve Lamacq in the NME:
Cocker of the North!
From the depths of time to the heights of present-day charisma, Pulp-once legendary for being World Famous in Sheffield - have reassessed their old position and re-entered the Pop orbit at the strangest of angles.
Crash-landing somewhere around World Of Twist / ('80s) Blue Orchids / Soft Cell / Alvin Stardust and several points between, Pulp provide another lucid, sometimes eccentric view of music, twisted and contorted to their own means. Outfront singer / satirist Jarvis Cocker sashays around the stage, part Elvis Presley, part John Travolta.
"It's a bit like playing on somebody's fireplace here," says Cocker. "I don't know if you can see, but it's all tiled around the stage. You could put a couple of horse brasses upon the walls, give it a bit of atmosphere. Until then here's another song."
Pulp have lots of good numbers now. There is a song with no name which is reminiscent of the Almond / Pitney collaboration 'Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart', the dextrous 'Don't You Want Me Anymore' with great gesticulations of Jarvis' hands: and the schizo, stern and jerky 'Love Is Blind'.
As Elvis Cocker does his slow-foot shuffle, the violin takes on a frenzied life courtesy of a David Byrne lookalike and the bass-drums waltz off with the Farfisa organ. Pulp meanwhile continue their bizarre resurrection as oddities, just on the right side of madness.
The disco-boogie-angst of 'Countdown', the next single in June, is followed by the climactic current 45 'My Legendary Girlfriend' - complete with cock-up in the middle. It's very grand, but edgy and earnest with it. Pulp are top entertainment, with lots lurking beneath.