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The Herald Scotland
28-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Herald Scotland
Pulp revealed as mystery band Patchwork as they appear for Glastonbury set
Their performance comes 30 years after their headline performance at the festival when they stood in for The Stone Roses after the Manchester band's guitarist John Squire was injured in a cycling accident. Jarvis Cocker enjoyed a number one album with Pulp this year (Yui Mok/PA) Groups of people wearing waterproof parkas took to the stage before the performance began, and footage from their 1995 headline show was broadcast on the screen behind. Following their opening track, the Jarvis Cocker-fronted band launched into one of their best known songs, Disco 2000, from 1995's Different Class, one of the most acclaimed albums of the 1990s, prompting a mass singalong from the Glastonbury crowd. Following the song, Cocker said: 'My name's Jarvis, we're Pulp, sorry for people who were expecting Patchwork, did you know that we were going to play?' After cheers from the crowd, he added: 'Psychic? Good. 'Listen, those two songs we just played, Sorted For E's & Wizz and Disco 2000, were first played on this stage 30 years and four days ago. Pulp thrilled the crowd just over 30 years since they headlined the event (Yui Mok/PA) 'It was the very, very first time they were played – you could say they were born in Glastonbury. 'Why were we here at Glastonbury that time? We'll get into that, but if you listen to this song, which isn't so old, and actually was released four weeks ago or something, it gives you a clue in the title, and I want you all, every one of you, right back to those tents at the back, to come alive.' The band then played Spike Island, which was the first single from their first album in 24 years, More, released earlier this year, which the band said was intended as a follow-up to Sorted For E's & Wizz. Pulp also treated fans to Acrylic Afternoons from 1994's His And Hers, backed with violin, with Cocker holding some cups up as he sang about cups of tea, and appearing to throw food into the crowd. Pulp are one of Britpop's most enduringly popular bands (Yui Mok/PA) Cocker, who was wearing a brown suit and green shirt, then picked up an acoustic guitar for a performance of Something Changed from Different Class, which brought a sway from the crowd. The band finished with a double whammy of two of their best know songs, Babies and Common People, having played their breakthrough single Do You Remember The First Time? earlier in the set. Pulp's appearance comes after keyboard player Candida Doyle had appeared to confirm the band would not perform at the festival. Asked whether she would be performing on BBC 6 Music, Doyle said: 'We wanted to, just because it's the 30th anniversary and that kind of thing, and they weren't interested. 'And then we were thinking maybe next year, and then they're not doing it next year.' Pulp were originally formed in Sheffield (Yui Mok/PA) Formed in 1978, Pulp struggled to find success with the dark content of early albums It (1983), Freaks (1987) and Separations (1992), before finding their audience during the 1990s Britpop era with their first UK top 40 single, Do You Remember The First Time? and the subsequent His 'N' Hers album, in 1994. In 1995, they gained nationwide fame with the release of the single Common People and their Glastonbury performance. Pulp are currently made up of singer Cocker, keyboard player Doyle, drummer Nick Banks and guitarist Mark Webber, and have achieved five UK top 10 singles and two UK number one albums.
New Statesman
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- New Statesman
Jarvis Cocker at 61: Is this hardcore?
Photo byAre we in the era of the Mature Reunion Album? long hoped for but largely unexpected album releases lately by Blur, Everything But The Girl, Stereolab, and now Pulp, measuring the middle-age of both artist and audience. More, released on 6 June 2025, is the eighth Pulp album (their seventh came out just weeks after 9/11.) On Friday they re-united at the O2 and, fittingly, the album topped the UK Charts that night: Pulp's audience wanted More. When Pulp take to the stage, it is in front of a red velvet backdrop, the now expanded eight-piece band augmented by string section. Jarvis Cocker ascends the stage alone on a podium. The age-appropriate indie chug of opener 'Spike Island' is uplifting, but a little more ordinary than their 1990s material, which fused together two distinctly Yorkshire traditions: Alan Bennett observational comedy and specifically Sheffield electronic futurism. Cocker, 61, dressed in a dark, double-breasted suit, addresses the audience with the ease and command of a broadcaster. 'Once we're alive,' says the frontman early in the set, 'we have to grow up. The first step of growing up is clapping in time.' He invites the audience to join him in this 'developmental milestone', a neat bit of crowd control that tees up Mature Reunion Album track 'Grown-Ups', and one of tonight's surprise themes. Pulp's intergenerational appeal is apparent across the stadium. Older parents now bring grown-up children. Though their audience is noticeably broad – only a few lone aesthetes adopt the frontman's signature specs and vintage suits – Cocker remains the patron saint of people who hate stag do's and visit charity shops long after their salaries have stopped necessitating that. More than this, Pulp endure as cool, evidenced by Charli XCX's recent on stage call for a 'Pulp summer' at Coachella Festival in a way that impossible to imagine her doing for Blur. On the London stage, each of Pulp's Mature Reunion Album tracks have an unconscious double in their earlier work. 'Farmer's Market', a ballad Cocker says tonight is about how he met his wife, in the audience – hustling her phone number at the car park of an organic food bazaar – obsesses over the same questions of chance and fate as 1995's 'Something Changed', which tonight is delivered acoustic by the four nucleus Pulp members (happily, viewed together, they still look more like a departmental meeting than an arena rock group.) Ditto new song 'Tina' is a pen portrait of late middle-aged lust on a commuter train (which also contains a good reference to Mrs Thatcher's TINA acronym.) It's a greyer haired update of 'Disco 2000', their 1995 glam rock stomp about the memory of teenage sexual obsession. Listening to Pulp's greatest hits CD on my early teenage paper round in the 2000s, I remember feeling so scandalised and compelled by all the sex in their work that I worried I should keep this enjoyment private (lest it reveal something inadvertently awful about myself). There is less of this side of Pulp tonight, their more subversive songs about tragedies in reservoirs or exacting sexual revenge against West Londoners have been temporarily retired, to be our-age appropriate. This dulls some of Pulp's weird appeal. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe Cocker's best writing was first as a misfit outsider in his native Sheffield, then as a geographical and class outsider in 90s media London. But that success made him something of an insider, which his writing has never really reckoned with. Cocker is one of his generation's cultural luminaries. He is a longstanding BBC broadcaster, a Meltdown curate and broadsheet arts fave whose collected lyrics are published by Faber. Now, the albums he infrequently releases seldom examine what exactly this type of life is like. Pulp's last big statement forms the unexpected high point of tonight's set. Introducing 'This Is Hardcore', the title track of their 1998 album, Cocker sits at the top of a small illuminated staircase (metaphor klaxon), splayed across a leather Mastermind chair and sipping an espresso, which is brave at 9PM. Against a seedy, dramatic loop, which repeats and throbs like erotic fixation, Cocker purrs about wanting it now, wanting it bad. The song's lyrics were written to compare the singer's experience of fame to what he termed his 'revulsion and attraction' to pornography, all with the subtext of his then escalating cocaine use. I had to get a little past paper round age to learn to love that part of the hits CD. Tonight, four songs come from This Is Hardcore, and it's in this material that Cocker delivers his most captivating performances of the night. Perhaps now that the album's chief obsessions of fame, pornography and cocaine have all accelerated in the 2020s, it has widened that album's appeal. The final third of the set runs through their big, 1990s hit singles. The biggest of which is 'Common People'. 'Common People' was conceived as a fanfare, but looking around tonight it's something of a requiem for a period when strange, five-minute songs about class somehow topped the charts. But it's never typically the biggest songs that get you in arena shows. Earlier, during 'Help The Aged', another This Is Hardcore cut, Cocker invites the audience to sing a falsetto refrain that he can seemingly no longer summon as his baritone has grown older, and the line 'funny how it all falls away' flashes on the screens for our benefit. Like 'Eleanor Rigby', 'Help The Aged' is one of those rare songs that peers out from pop's cult of youth, and is alarmed by what it finds there. 'Old age isn't a battle,' wrote Philip Roth in 2006's Everyman, 'old age is a massacre.' Guitarist Mark Webber's scuzzy, vengeful guitar part sounds suitably blood-shedding. There's a line in the song about dying your hair: the one thing you can change as time bulldozes on. As the line is delivered, a woman in front of me smiles at her partner, ruffles his grey hair, and cuddles up to him. Pulp's work has found a new theme. Something scary, something you might view with revulsion and attraction, something really hardcore: getting old. [See more: The rise of the west] Related
Straits Times
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Straits Times
Pulp score first UK No. 1 album in 27 years with More
Pulp released the new album's opening track, Spike Island, on April 10 – their first new single in over a decade. PHOTO: FACEBOOK Pulp score first UK No. 1 album in 27 years with More LONDON - British band Pulp returned to the top of the UK album charts for the first time in 27 years on June 13 as their new record More went to No. 1. More was released last week just before the group, led by Jarvis Cocker, kicked off a UK and Ireland tour. It is Pulp's eighth studio album and their first since 2001's We Love Life. The band, from the British city of Sheffield, last topped the UK albums chart in 1998 with This Is Hardcore. The Official Charts Company said More also topped the Official Vinyl Albums Chart. 'The day an album is released to the public is a very special day,' Cocker said, in a statement on the album's release. 'The music changes from being something owned only by the band to something that can be owned by anyone – it can become part of people's lives. It's magic.' Pulp found fame in the mid-1990s Britpop wave with hits such as Common People, Disco 2000 and Help the Aged. They split in 2002 before reforming twice in subsequent years. More was recorded over three weeks in late 2024 and the band has previously said it was dedicated to late bassist Steve Mackey, who died in 2023. Mackey is credited as a songwriter on two of the album's songs. Pulp released the first single from the album, Spike Island, in April followed by Got To Have Love in May. REUTERS Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Metro
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Metro
'Secret Glastonbury performers' celebrate UK number 1 album weeks before festiva
A band who are tipped to perform a secret surprise set at Glastonbury 2025 have celebrated the run-up to the festival with a number one album. Pulp, the Sheffield band best known for their 90s hit Common People, recently returned to the music business with new album More after over a decade away. Initially formed in the late 1970s, Pulp gradually worked their way up the charts until they finally hit the big time in the mid-1990s as a main player in the Britpop explosion. They scored five consecutive top 10 hits between 1995 and 1997, battling with the likes of Oasis, Blur, and Radiohead for a spot on top of the Official Charts. Albums Different Class and This Is Hardcore both secured number ones for Jarvis Cocker, 61, and co. in1995 and 1998, and they've now landed their third with 2025 comeback More. They beat competition from a stellar list of new entries, including recent releases from pop singer Addison Rae (who got to number two) and London rapper Little Simz (who got to number three). Last week saw a resurgence for Sabrina Carpenter's Short n Sweet, following her return and an announcement of a new album – that stopped 70s stalwarts Sparks from picking up their first UK number one album. But Pulp have avoided the same fate, shifting thousands of copies in More's first week of release to keep up a staggering run in the UK charts in 2025: every single week has seen a different album hit number one. To support the album, Pulp are currently in the middle of a UK tour and have received regular radio play with their new singles, Spike Island and Got to Have Love. And if recent speculation is to be believed, Spike Island and Got to Have Love will be getting their Glastonbury debuts at Worthy Farm between June 25 and June 29. For weeks now, those attending the 2025 festival have speculated that a band currently known as 'Patchworks' are in fact the Sheffield rockers in disguise. According to an anonymous tip poster on social media known as SecretGlasto, Pulp will be taking to the Pyramid Stage in the primetime slot of 6.15pm on Saturday, June 28. The account shared a video of a patchwork quilt, which featured someone using a sewing machine, before cutting to numerous clips of Jarvis Cocker and Pulp. More Trending In the video, Pulp member Candida Doyle is speaking to BBC radio presenter Jo Whiley about how she used to do patchworking as a hobby while with the band. 'I used to do patchwork when I was on tour,' she revealed to Jo. 'And I made a really nice bit of patchwork, that's all I can think of right now.' Other names, like Haim, Harry Styles, Timothee Chalamet, Robbie Williams, and even Oasis have been mentioned as potential performers in the same slot (despite Noel and Liam Gallagher distinctly saying no). Got a story? If you've got a celebrity story, video or pictures get in touch with the entertainment team by emailing us celebtips@ calling 020 3615 2145 or by visiting our Submit Stuff page – we'd love to hear from you. MORE: From Glastonbury to Wilderness – what to wear this festival season MORE: Glastonbury performer forced to cancel all shows in 2025 over mental health MORE: 'Chilling' horror with 91% on Rotten Tomatoes soars up Amazon Prime chart
Time Out
11-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Out
Pulp at London's O2 Arena: start time, tickets, potential setlist and what you need to know
Up until a few years ago, it seemed like legendary Britpop band Pulp had retired for good. But in 2023 the 'Common People' singers made an epic comeback with their international 'This Is What We Do For An Encore' tour. Jarvis Cocker and co clearly can't get enough of the touring life, and are about to embark on another nationwide stint of concerts, playing six shows across four major UK arenas this June. Pulp will swagger onto the stage in London this weekend as part of the 'You Deserve More' tour. Even more exciting – they've just released a brand new album More, and are likely to be playing lots of tunes from it (as well as all the classics). Heading to the show? Here's everything you need to know. When are Pulp playing at London's O2 Arena? Pulp are playing in London on Friday, June 13 and Saturday, June 14. What are the timings? Doors to the venue will open at 6.30pm for both weekend shows. The show is set to start at 8pm and wrap up at around 10.30pm. There will be an interval halfway through the concert which will feature 'extended performances', Jarvis Cocker said in an Instagram post. What's the setlist? There is no official setlist, so all will be revealed on the night. However, Pulp's last live show in Glasgow went like this: Spike Island Grown Ups Slow Jam Sorted for E's & Wizz Disco 2000 F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E. Help the Aged Tina Farmers Market This Is Hardcore Sunrise Something Changed The Fear O.U. (Gone, Gone) Seconds Acrylic Afternoons Do You Remember the First Time? Mis-Shapes Got to Have Love Babies Common People A Sunset Who is supporting? Pulp won't have a support act at the O2 this weekend. Can you still get tickets for Pulp at London's O2? Yes! Tickets are still available for both nights online via AXS and Ticketmaster. They range from £59-£156.
