Pulp reveals his first new album in 24 years, and a single called Spike Island

Indie Icons Pulp announced a new album, More, and shared his first single in almost 24 years, called Spike Island.

Speaking of BBC 6 musicSinger Jarvis Cocker said the group was selected in the studio by the overwhelming response to their reunion tour in 2023.

“We played a new song towards the end of the tour, and nobody threw us things, or left to go to the bar,” he said. “So we thought we will continue and see what we could mention.”

The Sheffield Band was one of the greatest acts of the Britpop era of the 1990s – although their music never integrated into musical revisionism of this movement – with songs like Babies, Disco 2000 and ordinary people.

Trained in Sheffield in 1978, they sold more than 10 million records after taking a (very) long path to success.

After the years 2001, We Love Life, the group had a decade interruption. They reformed in 2011 for a number of festivals dates, including a surprise Glastonbury performance, and met again in 2023.

The new single was inspired by the infamous Stone roses concert at Spike Island, Widnes, in 1990 – a show that was variously described as an important step for independent British music, and a disappointing mess with a doubtful sound.

Pulp’s guitarist Mark Webber told Lauren Laverne for music that the show had been “a slight anticlimax, to be honest”.

“I think everyone felt that,” he said. “There was a lot of anticipation but it did not seem very well, it was very windy and the atmosphere was not there.”

Cocker said he had not been to the show, but that he had written the lyrics after talking to various participants, including the musician Jason Buckle, of the group, who saw I, who co-wrote the single of Pulp.

“Everything he remembered was a DJ between each song said:”Spike Island comes to life, Spike Island comes to life“He said.

“This sentence stayed with me. I have a very short attention duration, I think.”

Cocker said that the song was a sister song from 1995 Tristed for E’s and Whiz, which was also based on the experience of a fan of Stone Roses.

The inspiration for this song was “a girl I was talking about lead to Sheffield one night,” he recalls.

“She said that everything she remembered was that the people who surrender saying:”Is everyone sorted for E and Whiz? ‘. Then this sentence remained in my mind. “”

The more will be published on June 6 and is dedicated to the former Bassist of Pulp, Steve Mackey, Died in 2023, at the age of 56.

Cocker said that the recording without the musician was “weird at the beginning” but that there were “two songs on the disc to whom when Steve”, which made him feel part of the project.

“It was not the most beautiful thing,” continued the singer, “but people you are close, you never forget them, and you can do things to remember.”

The album was recorded over three weeks in 2024, and Cocker said that there were “no too high themes, with the exception of feelings, perhaps, which seems very wafty and not very precise”.

He said that the absence of a global idea had given the group a feeling of freedom, compared to more conceptual albums as this is hardcore.

“We have (recorded) fairly quickly, and we tried not to think about it too much, because this is what made the last two albums of dough are a little painful,” he said.

“It was mainly my fault,” he added, “because I had never gathered the words, so I always changed them and I played.

“This time, they were all written before going to the studio, and I realized that it was much less stressful.

“You know, I would always be a little stressed in the studio, because I knew that once the music is finished, I had to write the words. I don’t know why I got through it,” he said.

In a press release announcing the disc, Cocker added: “We hope you appreciate music. It has been written and interpreted by four human beings from northern England, helped and encouraged by five other human beings from various places in the British Islands.

“No AI was involved during the process.”

However, he used artificial intelligence to create Video for Spike IslandWho animates the famous “Cardboard Cut-out” figures which appear on the cover of the biggest album of Pulp, Different Class.

“All the mobile images presented in the video are the result of me feeding in a motionless image, then typing a ‘invites’ ‘such as:` `The figure in black and white remains motionless while the bus in the background dies out’, which led to (a) a sequence where the coach slips strangely towards the cutting of me ”, said Cocker.

“On weekends, I started working on the video, it was a strange period: I got out of the house and I continued to expect strange environmental transformations due to the images that the computer had generated.

“The experience had marked me. I do not know if I still re -established myself.”

After finishing the video, the musician said he had landed firmly on the side of “human intelligence” on AI.

The group will launch a tour of the United Kingdom the day after the album’s release in June but, in response to a music auditor, said they had “no project” to play Glastonbury.

To do this, it would take a logistical upheaval because they are due to two shows in the Hollywood Bowl of California at the weekend of Glastonbury.