Not many artists come back to massive crowds after over two decades without a new album. Yet that's just what happened to legendary British rock band Pulp, who will release their first album since 2001, More, on June 6.
After a series of massive gigs for their latest reunion, Pulp are releasing 11 sonically rangy songs, reflective of the band's extensive history. More is just that: More tempos and moods, more diverse instrumentation (including horns and strings), and more hallmark spoken-word sermons from frontman Jarvis Cocker.
"There's a lot of different stuff on there. There could be some eyebrow-raising moments for some people," Banks says. "It's good to have variety on a record. You don't want to just be one slab of sonic-ness."
After such a long break, even the remaining members didn’t think it would happen. In August 2023, longtime drummer Nick Banks told NME: "It’s hard enough to get together to rehearse and play a few gigs, let alone work out what we’re going to be able to do to make a new record." He called the idea of a new release "highly unlikely."
In that 22-year interim, Banks and his bandmates — vocalist and lead songwriter Jarvis Cocker, keyboardist Candida Doyle, and guitarist Mark Webber — had done the "hard enough" thing of reuniting for a tour on two separate occasions. Once in 2011 and again near the time of Banks’ NME interview in 2023.
Clearly, the band wasn’t feigning a breakup so they could capitalize on a reunion to sell an album. They still wanted to play together, but the years-long processes of making their last album, 2001's We Love Life and its predecessor, This Is Hardcore (1998), were exceedingly difficult.
"How long This Is Hardcore and We Love Life took to write and record, I think that would scar any sane human being," Banks tells GRAMMY.com.
However, in the midst of their more recent reunion tour, Cocker brought some new songs to the band, including More tracks "Hymn of the North" and "Background Noise." After what Banks describes as a few "creative days," Pulp worked out the songs and added them to their sets.
It turns out that Cocker had plenty of songs in the vault, and More eventually took shape. They even recorded and mixed the whole album in three weeks, discarding the type of indecision that left their previous records landlocked for so long. "The LP evolved naturally. There was no record contract we had to fulfill, it was just a natural progression that went from adding a few new songs to our set, to getting together in a rehearsal room to see if we could come up with anything interesting worth recording, and we thought we did!" Doyle tells GRAMMY.com.
Debut single "Spike Island" is a return to their fiery Britpop glory years. "Slow Jam" emphasizes their storied songwriting skills, growing from spacious funk to big string flourishes and then receding to its original form. "Got To Have Love" harkens back to Pulp’s formative years in the late '70s when disco was all the rage, stewing on a danceable beat and erupting into an effective guitar solo.
Learn more: 10 Songs To Get Into Britpop: Listen To Classics By Oasis, Elastica, Blur & More
In the aftermath of the recording, Banks is similarly grateful that Pulp could create music worth hearing. "We're all there, in usually quite a small room, making a hell of a racket, seeing if we can actually come up with something that other people might want to spend five minutes listening to. Thankfully, that occurred."
The band will make a hell of a racket on their tour of the U.K. and North America that kicks off on, June 7, hitting major venues including two sold-out nights at London’s O2 Arena, a pair of co-headlines with LCD Soundsystem at the Hollywood Bowl, and a slot at Forest Hills Stadium in New York City.
Banks sat with GRAMMY.com to discuss how More came together, its speedy recording, and staying relevant 40 years into their career.
In 2023, you told NME it was "highly unlikely" Pulp would write another album. Now you’re doing it. Why is that?
Indeed, that is the 64 pence question. I'm not entirely sure why. I don't know if I can give you a definitive answer, to be honest. The last time we did some concerts back in 2011 and 2012, we made a conscious decision: No new music. But this time it was left a bit open. Once we all got together and played some concerts, and it was all going fine, we reacquainted ourselves with each other and realized that we didn't dislike each other. We actually quite liked each other.
Then Jarvis brought a song to a sound check, and said, "Oh I quite fancy trying some bits on this." We were kind of like, "Uh oh, here we go. Where's this gonna take us?" Because it's difficult when you go to see bands of a certain age. When they say, "Here's a new song," everyone kind of goes. "Uh oh. Is this going to be any good? Or is it going to be a pile of poo?"
Me and Candy [Doyle] were wary of this. I basically said, "Jarvis, look, if we're gonna make a new record. I don't want to be sat on a sofa for a year while someone fannies around with this, that, and the other." Our last two records took a hell of a long time to do, because people sat around fannying about.
He said, "I don't want to sit around in a studio for a long time. I want to make a quick record." So with that in mind, me and Candy had a chat, and she said, "Well, Jarvis is going to make music anyway, so we might as well be positive about it and see where it takes us," which I think is a great attitude.
So, over not too long a time, we ended up with 14 or 15 mostly made tracks, and you could then think about going into the studio and actually recording them properly.
You’ve said that the illustrious Mercury Prize is cursed because after you won it in 1996 for your album Different Class. The albums that came after, This Is Hardcore and Wheel of Life, took forever to record. However, the new album was recorded in three weeks. Did this new record feel like the early days of Pulp?
Yeah, a little bit. In the early days, you had such a limited budget that you had to do stuff quickly. Music needs to be an immediate thing. If you labour at it too much, you're working too hard.
Back in the old days, it should be: write a song in an afternoon; record it the next day; release it the week after, and it's limos and dancing girls forevermore afterwards. That's the template. But it didn't often work out that way, unfortunately, so to do it in three weeks was absolutely fantastic. It was recording a song a day, sometimes a song and a half a day, which is incredible.
Back in the This is Hardcore days, three weeks we'd not got the snare drum sound. Working with [producer] James Ford was great because he really did instill a feeling of not getting bogged down in certain bits.
One great thing that helped is that Jarvis wrote the words before going into the studio, which is really quite unusual. Going back to Different Class and His N Hers, when you start working on songs in a rehearsal, we just get a mumble of words. You have no idea what he’s on about because he was obviously a person who would do his homework on the bus going to school. To actually sit down and write a load of words beforehand really did help the process because then he couldn't put off writing the words for another day. He got them done so he could sing them.
Are there any songs on the new album that you're particularly excited to play live?
My favourite one off the record is "Tina," but I'm not very excited about playing that live because so far we've been cocking it up. So that does add in a frisson of some may say excitement, some would say mortal fear, but I'm sure we'll get there in time.
I think there's such a good variety of sounds, feelings, and musical textures on the record. I don't think when people start to hear the record, they're going to go, "It all just sounds the same."
I read that book signings for your 2023 memoir, So It Started There: From Punk To Pulp, were filled with new fans. What is it like to see the current generation so passionate about the band you’ve been in for nearly 40 years?
It's great to feel that you're still hopefully touching people in the right way with the music that you've helped to form. We've been playing lots of festivals and our own shows since last year, and it's great that you can look out from the stage and you're not just looking at a sea of 50-something-year-old blokes nodding their heads. There's still such a great variety of ages in the audience, and that's fantastic.
Kids who are no older than my kids seem to be into it, and singing along to loads of the words. Maybe that's tantamount to the timeless nature of the stuff we've done in the past? Hopefully, they're going to get into this new record as well.
We have matured somewhat. Back in the nineties, it was more novel that you finally had people a) attending your concerts and b) enjoying your concerts. That was some great revelatory moments of those early years. The novelty now is seeing kids who probably weren't born still getting into Pulp music.
One of the reasons you were unsure about making a new album is the years-long commitment it incurs. How do you feel about the years ahead of this current album phase?
As long as it's mostly getting out and playing live to people wherever that may be around the globe, then I'm all for it. I like travelling. I like playing concerts. I don't like sitting on sofas listening to endless playbacks of remixes and all that kind of stuff.
We’re beyond those days of 10 of us crammed onto a tour bus going around Europe for four weeks, living in each other's pockets. That's gone, and that's probably for the best. We're all a bit older. We're all a bit more sensible. But we still enjoy getting out and playing to live audiences. I'm looking forward to it, and it's interesting to see where it takes us.