THE INCREDIBLE PULP

PULP
Rock Garden

PULP CAN seem like a drawn out series of whispers at the best of times, but these nimble urchins come loose as a goose, perfecting the art of unclear melodies and imprecise steel and sulphate Velveteen mayhem.

Of all Lou's lost sheep, these are the oddballest of the lot. Some show-off shambling electric busk through a Peter Pan world of scatty, scrappy charm. Often harrowing, they nevertheless give this greatly soothing impression that their rasping, barbed energies are more and less than words. They give this impression that, for their purposes, disintegration is as much pop as (say) neat rhyme, fast fun, sidewalk skips, the light of mischief, girls who read Henry Miller on the Underground, sharing gum, all these things.

If we're dragged into the rubber-room with the opening 'Little Girl', the truest lust song ever written, we're let out at the end with the new smooch 'Dogs Are Everywhere'. Jarvis Cocker now escaped from his wheelchair and sounding like a miracle mix of Scott Walker and Ernie & Bert. Best of all is violist/occasional guitarist Russell who stares like the mad one from Sparks.

Pulp have to decide between the charts and the asylum before much longer, because this ain't no indie sludge. Pulp are a mouthful of eyeballs scraped against your insides and it's here that the comedy bulges. They were the best band in the otherworld tonight

JONH WILDE