Far more than the themes of aging, sex, and loss, Pulp’s More straight-facedly spreads the word of love and it is the start of something new—a rebirth.
Has there ever been a band that has successfully straddled between the mundane and the exotic with such British panache as Pulp? In the 1990s, they had a songbook of coming-of-age stories with memorable, ribald scenes: the narrator of “Babies” hiding inside a wardrobe to eavesdrop on a friend’s sister having sex. However, these were unconventional yet realistic love songs.
Yet Pulp could be sentimental: “Something Changed” is a succinct account of coup de foudre, or love at first sight. Thirty years later, Jarvis Cocker spells the word L-O-V-E during the Northern soul-inspired anthem “Got to Have Love”. It not only echoes Them’s “Gloria” but finds Cocker reprimanding and exhorting himself in a self-referential monologue. Upon first listen, it could be Pulp in their 1990s heyday, but, in 2025, it hits differently: more urgent, more sincere, more poignant. Yes, More is about the supremacy of love.
Jarvis Cocker, the rakish and rangy 61-year-old frontman of Pulp, is, in effect, saying on More, Pulp’s eighth studio album, that without love, we cease to exist. “I used to be very embarrassed that I couldn’t say that word… love,” Cocker told Darran Anderson of The Quietus. “It was weird. I grew up listening to love songs and wanting to experience it, but I found the word… It took me until I was approaching 40 years old to actually say it.”
On More, Pulp’s first album in 24 years, there is a newfound, unabashed sincerity, which is unheard of on their previous records. In other words, Cocker is saying it while “keeping a straight face,” as he sings in “Got to Have Love”. Painting Cocker as an erstwhile ironist who is now writing from the heart would be incorrect: firstly, he was not one; secondly, I would be nearly thirty years late to describe him as such. Cocker penned “irony is over” in “The Day After the Revolution” for a reason: to put it to rest. (However, the irony is over, as it is the last track on the album. Oh, Cocker, you mind-twisting tease!)
How to confront the fact that, as a band, you have been away for 24 years? Easy, or it is for Pulp. That is what they have perennially done: mythologize. The narrative of Pulp is a tale of perseverance: despite appearing on the John Peel Show in 1981, they did not find commercial success until 1994, with the release of their album His ‘n’ Hers via Island Records. At this point, the Sheffield-born Cocker had moved to London and cultivated a Lothario persona—a Lord Byron of the North, yet one you would be more likely to find inside a wardrobe than in a Venetian boudoir.
In the chamber pop, Scott Walker-esque ballad “Farmers Market”—where an older narrator finds love in the carpark of a Farmers Market (how Pulp)—Cocker croons, “Now I stalk the labyrinth of my own myth”, acknowledging the myth of his persona. Whatever the subject matter, Cocker’s ever-evolving persona remains at the center of his art.
After the release of 1995’s quadruple-platinum selling album Different Class, Cocker had the challenge every working-class writer who engages with working-class themes faces upon reaching commercial success: how to write in light of this? Of course, his stories were rendered through a kitchen-sink realism and highlighted a class-divided United Kingdom. However, that was not his raison d’être. The bohemian Cocker never functioned in the realities of the everyday, which is why he was drawn to write about people who managed to live a “normal life”—it was, paradoxically, foreign to him. Moreover, Cocker was not purely capturing their political strife but the fantasy lurking beneath the surface of their daily lives.
Pulp’s songs are, for the most part, about being an outsider: whether that is detailing Cocker’s experiences in the working-class areas of Sheffield in the 1980s, or as a student at Central Saint Martins in London later that decade, or mingling with celebrities and supermodels in the mid-1990s. Therefore, Cocker was never an orthodox political writer, and thus, the transition from a working-class lyricist to a pop star was less incongruous with his image than it would be, say, for blue-collar hero Bruce Springsteen.
However, Cocker eschewed the potential contradiction of his image by writing about himself—through his persona—on This Is Hardcore (1998), which detailed his disillusionment with fame and the paranoia that came with it. In other words, Cocker went from writing anthemic tunes—”Common People”—that saw him attacking the bourgeoisie to an insular, darker vision, where there was a less-defined adversary. The graver truth: the new opposition was himself.
The opening track, “Spike Island”, continues with Pulp’s mythopoetic vision, with Cocker saying he was born to perform. Using the Stone Roses‘ famous 1990 ill-fated gig—which over time has become legendary—as a metaphor for the perils of nostalgia, Cocker, in contrast, accurately recounts how Pulp went out without a bang or, in his words, “The universe shrugged, shrugged, then moved on.”
Cocker has always been candid with his wry interpersonal and social observations: from class-fulled revenge to sex to existential anxieties. Prudish? Stay away. In the Buñuelian “I Spy”, the narrator relishes having sex with the wife of a cuckolded bourgeois—you won’t find that on More. Instead, the protagonist of the string-laden “Tina” has a reverie about “Screwing in a charity shop / On top of black bin bags” with, of course, Tina. Who is Tina? His girlfriend? No. Someone he has been admiring from afar, but whom he has never spoken to. Yet it captures a sadder point: a narrator who has not outgrown his fantasy.
Same old Cocker? Yes, and no. More is Pulp. There are air-punching, anthemic choruses; quasi-house jams; monologues; granular details; 1970s references; Cocker’s trademark speak-sing and sultry vocal grunts; and, obviously, mordant humor. Also, it contains an abundance of themes that they are known for: unrequited love, sex, voyeurism, and, above all, fantasy. Stylistically, too, Cocker remains bathetic. Put differently, Cocker will undercut a profound sentiment with a prosaic observation. For example, in “Background Noise”, he draws the comparison of perceiving the absence of love to the buzzing of a fridge, which, usually, you would only notice once it stops—very Pulp.
What is different, though, is that Pulp are at a different phase of life: middle age. Aging has been a theme in Pulp’s music since the 1990s. “On the back of the record, it says it’s okay to grow up, just as long as you don’t grow old,” Cocker said to Michele Manelis of Juice Magazine in August 1998. “It’s good to mature in some ways, but for me, what growing old means is becoming less open to things, and becoming too bogged down in your views. You have to fight against that as much as you possibly can.”
Famously, “Disco 2000” in part looks ahead to the year 2000, when the narrator and Deborah will be fully grown, while “Help the Aged” was written about Cocker’s quarter-life crisis. On More, we are on the other side of life, which is eloquently summed up by Cocker as “Gone from all that you could be / To all that you once were.” The theme of aging is best exemplified in the pulsating “Grown Ups”, which, musically, not only dates back to This Is Hardcore but is endowed with the Pulp aesthetic: when speed and intensity increase throughout the song, not to mention its stabbing guitar, bouncy bass, and shimmering synths.
“Grown Ups” is comprised of three parts: Cocker recounts when he fell out of a window in 1985; a pub conversation revolving around property and commuting; and traveling to a newly discovered planet on a rocket the narrator has built. It is replete with anxiety on aging and a reluctance to evolve, not unlike Cocker’s “Must I Evolve?” from his album Beyond the Pale (2020).
Conversely, the groove-laden “Slow Jam”, the next track, is one of acquiescence, effectively saying we should be having a slow jam rather than a slow death. In the coda, the music lifts and explodes with a beautiful swathe of strings before gradually receding. Considering that “Slow Jam” is, metaphorically speaking, about the resurrection of the narrator (also applicable to Pulp), the reference to Jesus is a potent image, not to mention loaded with Pulp lore: Cocker famously referenced Jesus at the start of 1998’s “Dishes”: “I am not Jesus though I have the same initials.”
The optimism in “Slow Jam” continues with “Farmers Market”, where Cocker sings “Ain’t it time we started living?”, which he repeats less as a question than as a mantra; vocally, echoing Nick Cave on Wild God (2024), in the way he stretches his voice. Cocker explicates that, as we grow older, existence deepens, including love, if we are open and fortunate to receive it.
That does not cancel out that there is ambiguity, mixed feelings, and spiritual confusion, on More. What Cocker suggests, though, is that there would be no point in mundane activities—grocery shopping or commuting—were humanity bereft of love. In a biographical reading, More reflects on Cocker’s relationship with Kim Sion, who have been together for 16 years. After a year apart in 2018, they reunited and married in 2024. Their relationship seems to have informed songs such as “Farmers Market” and “Background Noise”.
More is populated by a cast of characters who are, collectively, navigating this new stage of life while ascertaining where—and if—love has a place. Certainly, there are fewer laughs on More, due to the tender and wistful reflection on aging. However, there are tongue-in-cheek moments that bring to mind the younger, mischievous Cocker: “Here comes the Holy Trinity / Behold the crown of all creation / Come on, let’s have a threesome, baby / You, me, and my imagination.”
The funk-inspired “My Sex” takes a theme that Pulp are known for and spins it on its head: sex is more incorporeal than corporeal. Also, Cocker acknowledges that copulation is part of Pulp’s myth-making: “My sex is an urban myth.” What Cocker has garnered from Leonard Cohen is how to deliver a koan or a pickup line within the same verse, leaving the listener feeling profoundly affected by both, as if there isn’t a difference between the two.
Beginning with a pizzicato violin, “A Sunset”, the last track on More, delineates that there is beauty in growing older, as well as lessons to learn, with a sunset working as a metaphor for coming nearer to the end of life. As the backing vocals swell, you realize the over-commercialization of life, which “A Sunset” details, can be overcome by beauty and pathos. It is a mellow but profound way to end an album, especially one as largely anticipated as More. Knowing the attention that would come with the release of More, it could have easily influenced them in making a garish and melodramatic last track. Rather, they defy expectations with the quasi-prayer “A Sunset”, showing just how much they have matured.
With More, Pulp have broken away from the paradigm of bands reuniting for live concerts—in their case, from 2011 to 2012 and 2022 to 2024—only to end up making an album that could never stand alongside their best works. But were we ever expecting a perfunctory record by Pulp? Furthermore, More showcases how Pulp have moved forward, referencing different periods of their oeuvre: from Different Class to This Is Hardcore to the ballads on We Love Life (2001).
More is about feeling, a word found in the pre-chorus of “Spike Island”, as well as the line, “Nothing but a feeling way down at the base of my spine”, in “Farmers Market”. Through his writings, Cocker favors emotion over intellect; moreover, he is connected to the places and the people he has written about, despite being an outsider. Describing Cocker as an ironist is, indeed, a disservice, as it implies a disconnect from his subjects—even a holier-than-thou attitude.
More makes it clear that Cocker is no ironist—and is saying it straight. Therefore, More is not an unnecessary addition but the start of something new—a rebirth. Despite aging, each time we enter a new phase of life, we are novices; thus, we need love as we explore these uncharted territories. Far more than the themes of aging, sex, and loss, More straight-facedly spreads the word of love.