Jarvis Cocker still has the voice

Spectator

6 hours ago

For bands of a certain vintage, the art of keeping the show on the road involves a tightly choreographed dance between past and present, old and new, then and now. It's not a one-way transaction: there should be some recognition that the people you are playing to have also evolved since the glory years of the indie disco and student union.
Halfway through the first date of Pulp's UK tour following the release of More, their first album in 24 years, I started thinking about Withnail & I. Watching the film repeatedly as a young man, the booze-soaked antics of the dissipated 'resting actor' and his addled supporting cast seemed like great larks, albeit in extremis. The last time I watched it, approaching 50, sober as a judge, it played as the bleak tragedy it had surely always been. To steal the title of a Pulp song: something changed.
The music of Pulp has always been scored through with melancholy and painful longing, but its emotional heft and essentially good heart is more evident these days. Singer Jarvis Cocker no longer hides behind so many layers of ironic distance. As he half-joked before 'Help The Aged', at 61 he now requires audience assistance to reach the high notes.
More is Cocker's delayed, reluctant reckoning with adulthood. As he put it on 'Grown Ups', 'We're hoping that we don't get shown up/ 'Cos everybody's got to grow up.' Love was once a source of shame and embarrassment, he told us, but he has finally reached a gentlemanly accommodation with it.
The shift was evident on new songs such as 'Slow Jam', 'Got To Have Love' and 'Farmer's Market' – a terrific orchestral ballad – but also in the low-key sense of gratitude that emanated from the stage. Cocker came across as a warmer, less wary figure, tossing out grapes and sweeties to the front rows.
There were more obvious signs that we weren't in 1995 anymore. The group's core four – Cocker, Nick Banks, Candida Doyle and Mark Webber – nowadays resemble members of the history department of a Russell Group university who have decided to enliven the pre-retirement years by forming a band. They were joined by a string ensemble, a percussionist and several superb multi-instrumentalists, enabling Pulp2025 to shift seamlessly from the vast, corrupted Bond theme drama of 'This Is Hardcore' to a pared-down acoustic version of 'Something Changed'.
In the midst of all that evolution, the trick was that it was all still very recognisably Pulp. Framed by purple velvet drapes, the set was a Sheffield bingo hall transported to an aircraft hangar, while an air of slightly shambolic indie-ism survived the transition to a slick arena show.
Cocker still has the voice and, perhaps more importantly, the moves. His hands pirouetted like a good actor playing a bad magician. He corkscrewed into the air when excitement got the better of him, such as the moment when 'Common People' exploded into life. The song, which should by now feel glossy with overfamiliarity, was instead a juggernaut of propulsive energy.
By then, they had played most of More. 'Tina' might be a classic Pulp title destined to be for ever waiting in vain to become a classic Pulp song, but much of the new material held its own among the gold-standard highlights: 'Sorted For E's & Whizz', an exhilarating 'Disco 2000', 'Mis-Shapes', 'Do You Remember The First Time?' and 'Babies', as well as outliers such as 'The Fear' and 'O.U. (Gone, Gone)'. Nothing on More could possibly have the impact of those songs, a point the audience instinctively understood. That was then, this is now. Both band and fans simply seemed appreciative of the opportunity for 'one last sunset, one final blaze of glory.'
The Waterboys are also touring a new album, Life, Death and Dennis Hopper, a gonzo, genre-hopping 25-track sprawl that maps the life of the maverick US actor to the shifting currents of the postwar counterculture.
They played around half of it in Edinburgh, in a single suite that unspooled against a Hopper-heavy backdrop of black and white stills and saturated Super-8 video footage. It felt fresh, colourful, eccentric and ultimately celebratory.
On either side, they crunched out setlist staples such as 'Be My Enemy' and 'A Girl Called Johnny', which delivered power and punch without much in the way of surprises. The gig was at its best when the interplay between the musicians had space to stretch out. A reworked 'This Is The Sea' gathered an elemental power, and there was a nod to the recently departed Sly Stone during the still effervescent 'The Whole Of The Moon'. Like Pulp, the Waterboys have seen over 40 years' of active service, yet they are still evolving.