Pulp don't mess with winning formula with album that honours their past while not being enslaved by it
And, now, 24 years on from what many thought was their swan song, Pulp have returned with an album that rolls back the years in scintillating fashion.
Jarvis Cocker has released good solo material without ever reaching the highs that Pulp managed on a spectacular run of albums, from 1994's His 'N' Hers, 1995's Different Class to 1998's This is Hardcore. More, the Sheffield veterans' eighth studio album, may not quite be at that high-water mark, but it comes close enough. It's the sound of group honouring their own past while not being enslaved by it.
It showcases many appealing Pulp hallmarks, including an unerring pop sensibility, artful and engaging arrangements, witty and knowing lyrics and a spirited delivery from Cocker. He's one of the few frontmen who can get away with spoken-worded deliveries, a ploy that works beautifully on the lush, tender Farmers Market.
It should also be noted that anyone who was allergic to Pulp back in the day — and there were several — will find little here to convert them. For the rest of us, More is a delight from start to finish.
And what a start: Spike Island is inspired by the legendary 1990 gig (in the north-west of England, and not the prison island off the Cork coast) headlined by the Stone Roses in their pomp. It's not the first Pulp song to be written in its honour: Sorted for E's & Wizz was inspired by the phrase that an acquaintance of Cocker's recalled from that Spike Island show. Ultimately, it's a song about Cocker's own need to perform. 'I was born to perform/ It's a calling/ I еxist to do this/ Shouting and pointing.'
Relationships have been at the heart of many of Pulp's most enduring songs and so it is with Background Noise, a touching appraisal of what happens when love disappears. It may be a commentary on Cocker's divorce. He has subsequently remarried.
The marvellous Tina — as quintessential a Pulp song as you can get — laments missed opportunities, especially that with the titular woman, an old flame from decades ago.
On their last studio album, 2001's We Love Life, they called on the legendary Scott Walker as producer. This time, it's the turn of James Ford, one of the most in-demand studio alchemists of his generation, best known for his work with another big Sheffield export, Arctic Monkeys.
Ford doesn't mess with Pulp's winning formula and the result is a comeback album that burnishes, rather than detracts from the band's legacy. It's dedicated to Pulp bassist Steve Mackey, who died in 2023 just as these new songs were starting to take shape.
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RTÉ News
3 hours ago
- RTÉ News
Shakermaker - Oasis gig tops seismic data charts in UK
Oasis provided the most "ground-shaking" performance at Edinburgh's Murrayfield Stadium when they last played there in 2009, according to analysis of seismic data. The Gallagher brothers' last Scottish concert has topped the chart for the most powerful seismic concert at the venue in the last 20 years, the British Geological Survey (BGS) has said. The June 2009 Oasis gig beat the Red Hot Chili Peppers in June 2004, Kings of Leon in June 2011, and Taylor Swift in June last year, when measuring the peak earthshaking power of each event. The measurements were taken from a nearby seismic monitoring station, some 4km from the venue. At peak power of 215.06kW, the Oasis concert was more than twice as powerful as the next strongest one by the Red Hot Chili Peppers at 106.87kW. The rankings were revealed ahead of Oasis's comeback tour arriving in the Scottish capital this weekend - meaning there could be another "shakermaker". The power output is not related to the volume of the band or the crowd but rather the movement of fans jumping and dancing in time to the music, with the height of the jumping and weight of the crowd also potential factors. It means the current cohort of Oasis fans' seismic output could perhaps be compared to those of previous years. BGS seismologist Callum Harrison said: "In 2009, seismic signals generated by Oasis fans were consistent with a crowd energy of 215kW at its peak - enough to power around 30 of the scooters featured on the iconic Be Here Now album cover. "Our network of sensors around the country is sensitive enough to pick up ground movement from a source miles away that may not be detectable to humans - and precise enough to register exact timestamps for when the events occur. "The peak energy reading was recorded around 8:30pm on that June evening back in 2009, which correlates to the time the band first took the stage and performed Rock 'N' Roll Star, which couldn't be more fitting in terms of topping our seismic music chart." The BGS keeps an archive of continuous ground motion recordings from seismic sensors around the UK, dating back several decades. Harrison added: "In this instance, we are only looking back over 20 years. However, geological processes occur over vast time scales that can be difficult for humans to comprehend. "Improving our understanding of historical earthquakes is an important part of BGS research in trying to understand and mitigate the seismic risk around the country." Oasis bring their Live '25 tour to Croke Park on Saturday, 16 and Sunday, 17 August.
Irish Examiner
6 hours ago
- Irish Examiner
'We just got lucky': Tales from the Cork lads who ran merchandise stalls for Oasis in the 1990s
Morty McCarthy remembers the first time he met one of the Gallagher brothers. It was February 1992, and the Cork man and his band, the Sultans of Ping, were sharing a bill with fellow Leesiders the Frank and Walters at the Boardwalk venue in Manchester. A local lad by the name of Noel popped up during the soundcheck to say hello. He'd been rehearsing in one of the other rooms with an unsigned group he said were called 'Oasis', and wanted to reacquaint with the Franks, a band he'd previously worked with as a roadie. Little did anyone there know that the 'sound' 21-year-old and the four lads banging out tunes in the basement were on their way to becoming the biggest band in Britain. Or that McCarthy would have a front seat on the Oasis rollercoaster. As the Sultans' career plateaued, the Greenmount drummer ended up working with the Manchester band's merchandise material in the era when they exploded onto the scene. His switch of career to the merchandise world originated in his Sultans days when, as the non-drinker in the band, McCarthy was the designated van driver. During a period of downtime in early 1994, he heard that their merchandise company Underworld needed somebody to ferry gear to various gigs. McCarthy signed up, and drafted in his childhood pal Damien Mullally when an opening came up for somebody to look after the company's London warehouse. 'Underworld were probably the biggest merchandise outfit in the UK at the time,' recalls McCarthy. 'We just got lucky, because we all started working literally a couple of months before the whole Britpop thing broke. And Underworld not only had Oasis, they also had Pulp.' Liam and Noel Gallagher messing about at Knebworth in 1996. Mullally and McCarthy enjoyed working in the merchandise, travelling to gigs and making the most of life in London. In true Cork style, they'd even managed to secure jobs in Underworld for a few more of their mates from home. Not that it was all plain sailing. There was still an element of anti-Irish feeling in the UK in the mid-1990s – especially in the wake of the IRA bombing of the Bishopsgate financial district in 1993 – and going around in a van full of boxes meant the Cork duo were regularly stopped and questioned at police checkpoints. 'We also got a bit of it around Abbey Wood where we lived, but things were much better when we moved to Hackney, which was more multicultural,' says Mullally. Meanwhile, between April 1994 and the release of Definitely Maybe at the end of August, a real buzz was building around Oasis. The three singles Supersonic, Shakermaker, and Live Forever, had been hitting incrementally higher chart positions, and the album went straight to number one in the UK charts. The Gallagher brothers had arrived. For the Cork duo, the gigs they worked were getting ever busier, and the few dozen t-shirts and other bits they'd previously sold were now getting to hundreds and even thousands of units. Underworld realised they were going to need a bigger boat. Or at least a decent lorry. This created a bit of a conundrum as nobody in the company had the special licence required in the UK. Step forward the lad with the Irish licence which, at the time, was universal and didn't need the special HGV training. 'I'd never even sat in the truck before,' recalls McCarthy, now 55, of the day they went to hire their new vehicle from a yard near King's Cross. 'I just thought, how hard can it be? We got in and the first thing I did was hit a barrier. I was just thinking 'I'm not going to be able to reverse this. So whatever we do, we'll just have to drive it forward'. I suppose we had this 'It'll be grand' attitude. I wouldn't do it at this age!' Morty McCarthy on a merchandise stall back in the 1990s. Life on the road was a mixture of good fun and hard work. Depending on the tour, Mullally and McCarthy would sometimes be living on the crew's bus, or other times driving to venues themselves. Of course there were some late nights and partying along the way, but the Oasis entourage also had a serious work ethic. 'If everybody knew that did a couple of days off, then there might be a big party and a bit of a blowout. But a lot of the time, people were up early to get set up at the next venue, and working long hours through the day. You wouldn't have been able to do your job if you were partying all the time,' says Mullally, now working at the Everyman theatre in Cork. 'People got on very well on tour. You knew you just couldn't be invading people's private space or doing the langer in any way.' The band themselves travelled in a different bus, but both Mullally and McCarthy recall the Gallagher brothers as being down-to-earth lads who were always pleasant to deal with. 'I think because we were Irish, that helped too,' says Mullally. 'Yes,' agrees McCarthy. 'I even remember Noel joking with us about Taytos and Tanora!' He does recall a friendly disagreement before a gig in Bournemouth when Liam Gallagher fancied his footwear. 'We had this Dutch driver who used to come every week delivering merchandise, and he used to sell Adidas off the back of the truck. I'd bought this pair of orange Adidas. Liam collected Adidas trainers. He was like 'I'm having your trainers.' And I was going no, and he was like '100 quid!'.' While it was predominantly merchandise that kept Mullally and McCarthy involved with Oasis, they also dropped a load of equipment for the band to Rockfield Studios in 1995. Those sessions at the Welsh studio would of course spawn (What's the Story) Morning Glory?,the second album that would propel the band to stratospheric levels of popularity. On the road, part of the Cork duo's job was dealing with the increasing amount of bootleggers who were selling unofficial merchandise near the venues. 'We'd go out to chat to them, and then of course it'd turn out that a lot of them were friends of the Gallaghers from Manchester,' says Mullally. 'They were mostly nice guys so you'd just ask them to push back a bit – 'Just go down to the end of the road to sell your stuff'.' The mid-1990s was an era when everything was paid for in cash. This meant the two Cork lads would sometimes end up with tens of thousands worth of banknotes in cardboard boxes or plastic bags in the back of the truck or in a hotel after a gig. Liam and Noel Gallagher of Oasis arriving at Cork Airport in 1996. Picture: Dan Linehan An event like Knebworth in 1996 – when Oasis played to 250,000 people across two days – created even more issues. 'A few times a day we used to do a cash-run to get the money off the stall. Somebody would come along with a backpack and we'd stuff it with maybe 10 grand in notes," says Mullally. "You'd try to be as inconspicuous as you could walking through the crowd with that on your back, hoping that nobody comes at you.' Knebworth had 'proper' security vans taking the cash from the event HQ, but Mullally recalls the earlier days when himself and his co-worker would have to bank the money. 'You can imagine with all the stuff that was going on at the time, and two Irish guys coming into the bank with 20 grand in cash, sometimes even in deutsche marks if we were after a European tour. They'd be looking at you strangely, and you know that they're just about to push a button. But they might make a few phonecalls or whatever and we'd eventually get it done.' Knebworth is widely regarded as the high point for the band, but McCarthy also has particularly warm memories of the gig they played in his hometown just a few days later. 'I couldn't believe they were actually playing in Cork at that stage,' he says. He drove the truck from the UK via the Holyhead ferry, but as he arrived at Páirc Uí Chaoimh ahead of schedule, they wouldn't let him into the arena. Wary of leaving a truck full of merchandise parked around the city, McCarthy drove it to the seaside village of Crosshaven. 'When I got there I decided I'd leave it at the carpark at Graball Bay. I didn't even know if it'd fit up the hill but I just about managed it,' he recalls. When he went back later that evening to check everything was ok, there was a big crowd of children gathered around the emblazoned truck. 'There was a big mystery in Cork about where the Gallaghers were staying, and the word had gone around that this was their truck. One of the kids asked me 'Are Liam and Noel coming out to play?' I had to shoo them away.' Oasis merchandise has become an even bigger business since the 1990s. Picture: Lucy North/PA Those two Cork gigs were among the final dealings McCarthy had with Oasis. He has since moved to Sweden, where he teaches English, but regularly returns to the merchandising world for tours with various other bands. He's happy the Gallagher brothers are back together, and realises he was part of something special in the 1990s. 'It's hard to explain people the energy in the UK that the Britpop thing had. Musically, I didn't think it was the greatest, but the energy was phenomenal,' says McCarthy. ' I think at the time, the Indie scene was very middle class. But then along came Oasis. We probably didn't realise we were living in a golden era, but we had the time of our lives.'
Irish Daily Mirror
13 hours ago
- Irish Daily Mirror
Dad of man who died at Oasis gig was told 'it was an accident waiting to happen'
A "loving family man" who tragically fell to his death at an Oasis concert in Wembley slipped on spilled beer, his dad claims. Lee Claydon, 45, is believed to have fallen from the arena's upper tier just as the sell-out gig wrapped on Saturday night. The dad, from Bournemouth, was described as a "lifelong" fan of the Gallagher brothers and was at the gig alongside his brother Aaron, and his niece and nephew. Lee tragically died at the scene despite the best efforts of medics who desperately tried to save his life. His devastated father Clive Claydon, 75, claims his son plunged to his death after slipping on beer. "There was beer all over the floor, it was really slippery and Lee just slipped and fell," Clive said, reports The Mirror. "I've been told that it was an accident waiting to happen. It was a horrible, horrible accident. All I really know is there was beer everywhere, he slipped and we don't know the rest of it. Lee Claydon and his partner Amanda (Image: Facebook) "I wasn't there so I don't know what happened, but it will all come out. I am so devastated. I can't understand how it happened, I've never been to Wembley, but you would expect the health and safety to be good," he told the Sun. "He has never taken drugs in his life and he may have had a beer, who doesn't at a concert, but he certainly was not drunk." Lee's dad previously said his son was "a lifelong Oasis fan and he was so looking forward to going. Out of all the thousands of people there why's it got to be my son?" Paying tribute to Lee on Facebook, his cousin Shannon Gabrielle said: "Honestly don't even know what words to write right now. My cousin Lee tragically passed away this weekend after no doubt having the time of his life at the Oasis concert this weekend, most will have seen snippets in the news I'm sure and as you can imagine it has devastated the whole family and for his closest knit family unit it's the toughest time they are going through ever right now. "Sharing his go fund me page, in the hope that any donations, big or small, will go a long way towards helping his partner Amanda and the boys throughout this awful period and costs of things. You just don't fathom you will go out for a night of amazing fun and not come home at the end of it." After the news emerged, Oasis said they were "shocked and saddened" to hear of the death during their sell-out Wembley show this weekend. The band said in a statement: "We are shocked and saddened to hear of the tragic death of a fan at the show last night. Oasis would like to extend our sincere condolences to the family and friends of the person involved." Oasis at Wembley (Image: Lewis Evans/Big Brother Recordings) A spokesperson for Wembley Stadium said: "Wembley Stadium operates to a very high health and safety standard, fully meeting legal requirements for the safety of spectators and staff, and is certified to and compliant with the ISO 45001 standard. "We are regularly inspected by certifying authorities both on an event day and throughout the year, and we regularly review and test our plans to ensure adherence to the conditions set within the stadium's general safety certificate. "We work very closely and collaboratively with all relevant event delivery stakeholders - including event owners, local authorities, the Sports Ground Safety Authority and the police - to deliver events to high standards of safety, security and service for everyone attending or working in the venue." The Mirror have contacted Wembley Arena for further comment. Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest news from the Irish Mirror direct to your inbox: Sign up here. The Irish Mirror's Crime Writers Michael O'Toole and Paul Healy are writing a new weekly newsletter called Crime Ireland. Click here to sign up and get it delivered to your inbox every week
