Pulp come alive: Why Jarvis and co are the band who keep getting better with age

Twenty-four years after their last studio album, Pulp are doing the unthinkable: releasing new music. Their comeback single 'Spike Island' arrives ahead of a new album titled 'More', due out on 6th June 2025 via Rough Trade Records. For a band that helped define the kitchen sink drama of the 1990s Britpop era, this second coming is both a surprise and a delight – not least because it finds frontman Jarvis Cocker and his bandmates sounding as cheeky, sharp and relevant as ever. As Cocker sings on 'Spike Island', “I was born to perform, it’s a calling / I exist to do this – shouting and pointing” – a wry mission statement from an indie icon now in his sixties proving that the show is far from over.

If any band of that era was likely to resist a cash-in reunion, it was Pulp. Formed in Sheffield in 1978, they toiled in obscurity for years before finally achieving cause célèbre status in the mid-90s alongside Blur, Oasis and Suede. But Pulp always stood apart. They were the art-school misfits in a scene of lads and ladettes – Britpop’s razor-tongued outsiders chronicling the lives of “common people” and assorted mis-shapes with wit and empathy. Their breakthrough album ‘Different Class’ (1995) was a cultural phenomenon, packed with sardonic anthems about class and desire. By contrast, the darker follow-up ‘This Is Hardcore’ (1998) arrived as Britpop shifted from a cultural force to a spluttering facsimile, grappling with the comedown from fame and hedonism. After the lush Scott Walker-produced ‘We Love Life in 2001’, Pulp quietly disbanded, seemingly content to leave their legacy untarnished. Apart from a one-off single, ‘After You’, spawned during a brief 2011–2013 reunion, Pulp kept the door to new music firmly closed. They reunited for tours in 2011 and again in 2023, but the setlists remained a time capsule.

So why now? What sparked Pulp’s creative rebirth after nearly a quarter century? Credit partly goes to their triumphant 2023 reunion tour, which proved that the old magic still sparked joy – and new ideas. “When we started touring again in 2023, we practised a new song called 'Hymn of the North' during soundchecks and 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,” Cocker explained in a statement. He would later tell BBC 6 Music that the album had actually been “done for a while” and that the live reunion was “a big influence … the songs came back to life”. In other words, performing together again reminded Pulp of what made them tick – and gave them fresh material rather than just warm feelings. By November 2024, Pulp were in London’s Walthamstow, laying down tracks at Orbb Studio with producer James Ford (known for his work with Arctic Monkeys, Pet Shop Boys and more). Remarkably, they recorded and mixed the entire 'More' album in just three weeks. “This is the shortest amount of time a Pulp album has ever taken to record,” Cocker noted – “it was obviously ready to happen”. After years of dormancy, the creativity was flowing fast and free.

The resulting album 'More' will be Pulp’s first studio release after a lengthy gap that even the band seem slightly baffled by. “Yes: the first Pulp album for 24 years. How did that happen?” Cocker quipped in his album announcement. However it happened, the band clearly seized the moment. Their lineup in the studio remained the classic quartet of Cocker, keyboardist Candida Doyle, drummer Nick Banks and guitarist Mark Webber – the same configuration that powered Pulp’s 90s heyday, minus the late Steve Mackey who passed in 2023 – but they didn’t work in isolation. ‘More’ is very much a collaborative effort, with an interesting cast of contributors. Fellow Sheffield luminary Richard Hawley co-wrote one song on the album, reuniting with Pulp after having been an auxiliary guitarist on tours past. Longtime Cocker compatriot Jason Buckle (of electro-duo Relaxed Muscle) helped pen the lead single 'Spike Island' together – a fascinating choice of subject for a comeback song, and one that says a lot about Pulp’s mindset.

'Spike Island' takes its name from the legendary open-air concert that The Stone Roses staged in May 1990 on a muddy field in Widnes. In UK music lore, Spike Island is often romanticised as the Woodstock of the Madchester era – but those who were actually there have more mixed memories. Pulp’s guitarist Mark Webber attended the 1990 gig and later admitted it was “a slight anticlimax to be honest… it didn’t sound very good, it was windy and the vibe wasn’t there”. Jarvis Cocker himself wasn’t at Spike Island – he was 26 at the time, likely too busy plotting Pulp’s next move – but he “heard all the stories” from friends like Buckle who went. One detail in particular stuck with him: an overzealous DJ at the event who spent the day repeatedly yelling “Spike Island, come alive!” over the PA. The incessant, vaguely absurd rallying cry lodged in Cocker’s brain for decades. “All [Buckle] could remember was a DJ who said: ‘Spike Island, come alive.’ That phrase stuck in my mind,” Cocker recalled. Now it has resurfaced as the central refrain of Pulp’s new single – a knowing wink to rave-era mythology, but also a statement of intent. Pulp themselves are coming alive again, and they’re not shying away from the baggage of the past.

Musically, 'Spike Island' is a swaggering, festival-ready anthem in classic tradition. The second Pulp song to be pulled from that particular landmark show (‘Sorted For E’s and Whizz’ was also inspired by the event), it struts along on a disco-inflected rhythm track and even features a brief spoken-word interlude – touches that hark back to the sound of ‘Different Class’ and Pulp’s 80s art-pop roots. Over a brassy, upbeat groove, Cocker unleashes a torrent of typically wry yet reflective lyrics. “I was conforming to a cosmic design, I was playing to type,” he intones, eyeing his younger self with a raised eyebrow, before dryly observing how when Pulp split in the early 2000s “the universe shrugged and moved on”. There’s a lot packed into the song’s four-and-a-half minutes: self-deprecating humour, commentary on nostalgia’s distortions, and ultimately a triumphant reassertion of purpose. By the final chorus, Cocker sounds exuberant and re-energised, belting “Spike Island – come alive!” as if willing himself and his band back into existence. It’s a lot to chew on, but the gamble pays off. Like Blur on their lead track ‘The Narcissist’ from their most recent, equally surprising album, Pulp are looking backwards to shoot forwards, and it works brilliantly.

Naturally, Jarvis Cocker’s creative mischief doesn’t stop at the music. Always one for a conceptual flourish, he took the reins in directing the 'Spike Island' music video, which might be one of the more unusual clips in Pulp’s catalogue. The video is an experiment in artificial intelligence – perhaps the only part of this project where AI plays a role, and even then under very tight control. Cocker dug up the original black-and-white photographs of Pulp from the ‘Different Class’ album inlay (shot by legendary photographers Rankin and Donald Milne back in 1995) and fed those still images into an AI image-generating engine. By typing in specific prompts – “The black & white figure remains still whilst the bus in the background drives off,” for instance – he coaxed the algorithm to bring the old photos to life in surreal little ways. The resulting video places the band’s mid-90s selves in an ever-morphing, dreamlike landscape, blurring past and present. “The weekend I began work on the video was a strange time: I went out of the house and 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…” Cocker said of the trippy creative process. In true Jarvis fashion, he ultimately couldn’t resist adding a cheeky moral to the story. After immersing himself in AI for the visuals, he concludes the video with the tongue-in-cheek message: “My final thought? H.I. Forever!” – as in Human Intelligence forever, a reassurance that 'More' was made by people playing real instruments, not computers. Indeed, Cocker has emphasised that no AI was involved in the making of the music itself. Pulp’s human touch, thank you very much, remains sacrosanct.

If 'Spike Island' is our brash first taste of ‘More’, what else can fans expect from Pulp’s new album? Eleven tracks in total, all brand new (though Cocker has hinted that a couple revive ideas dating back to “last century” – Pulp are nothing if not archivists of their own back pages). The titles range from intriguingly playful ('Farmers Market', 'Background Noise') to intimate ('My Sex', 'A Sunset') and characteristically Pulp-esque ('Grown Ups'). Cocker’s Northern roots show in a track called 'The Hymn of the North', the very song that kick-started their writing spree in those 2023 rehearsals. Jarvis’s collaborators have offered their fingerprints: Richard Hawley’s co-written contribution might bring some of his crooning retro-romanticism, and one imagines the “Eno family” lending backing vocals could yield anything from celestial harmonies to quirky ambience. The inclusion of string arrangements by Richard Jones (arranged for and performed by the Elysian Collective string ensemble) hints that ‘More’ will have moments of orchestral grandeur. Yet, for all the new ingredients, Pulp insist it’s fundamentally four folks from Yorkshire and Lancashire making music the old-fashioned way: “Written and performed by four human beings from the North of England, aided and abetted by five other human beings from various locations in the British Isles,” as Cocker put it. In a poignant gesture, they’ve dedicated the album to Mackey. That dedication alone tells you that ‘More’ isn’t just a vanity project. It’s a band honouring their history while boldly forging a new chapter.

Even the album’s title raises a smirk – after so long away, Pulp are finally giving us something new. More songs, more stories, more of Cocker’s sardonic observations on life, love and the universe. Unlike many reformed 90s bands who lean purely on nostalgia, Pulp appear to be pulling off that rare trick: coming back older and wiser, yet still able to surprise and thrill. As Cocker has wryly noted, the album’s creation felt urgent and natural – “It wanted to come out, in some way – that was a good feeling”. There’s a sense that ‘More’ exists because it needs to, not because anyone demanded it or a festival headline slot required it. In typically self-deprecating style, Jarvis introduced the album by saying “These are the facts… This is the best that we can do” – as if ‘More’ is simply Pulp doing their job. But make no mistake: Pulp’s best has always been something special.

Everything about Pulp’s return feels both carefully considered and refreshingly unpretentious. There’s a self-awareness here – they know exactly where they left off and where they stand now. Once the ultimate underdogs of Britpop, Pulp are re-emerging not as a heritage act banking on nostalgia, but as a vital creative force with its edge intact. Their wit is as cutting as ever, their scope of collaboration is broad, and thanks to modern production polish from James Ford, their sound in 2025 is punchy and contemporary without sacrificing the quirks that make them Pulp.

And perhaps that’s the key to their longevity. Jarvis Cocker was never one to play the rock star caricature; he was the bespectacled social commentator dancing at the margins, turning kitchen-sink drama into pop poetry. Now he’s back to chronicle life from the perspective of a seasoned 60-something who’s seen the universe “shrug and move on”, yet still believes there’s magic to be found in the mundane and adventures to be had. “This time I’ll get it right,” Cocker exclaims on 'Spike Island'. The sound of a man embracing a second chance with both arms, Pulp’s story isn’t over. In fact, it might just be entering its most fascinating chapter yet.