He sways down the hallway with those prominent strides and those very long arms to the surprise of those present: press agents, journalists, and even his drummer Nick Banks (Sheffield, 1965). Halfway there, he seems to regret it and turns back. "Oh, I just need to go to the restroom for a moment," he clarifies as he continues on his way, absorbed, leaving behind a huge laugh from his bandmate. "It's Jarvis...," he says, as if those two words said it all. The scene, purely everyday, could summarize the last 24 years, the time Pulp has gone without releasing a new album. Jarvis - with Nick Banks, Candida Doyle, and the late Steve Mackey - left one day in 2002, without notice, after their record label terminated the band's contract due to low sales of their last album, We Love Life, and with him vanished one of the greatest exponents of 90s Britpop. And now, with the same unpredictable normality, after two reunion tours in 2011 and 2023, they have a new album. Like that brief stop at the restroom that takes longer than expected.
Because nothing seems to have changed in this time even though everything around them is radically different. More, the band's return after more than two decades of silence, sounds like it always did: like their Britpop. Now sprinkled with darker transitions, as already shown in This is Hardcore (1998); with sounds inspired by the British northern soul of the 70s like in Got To Have Love, one of the album's advance singles, or also in the early 2000s jersey beat, with the mix of hip hop and house, seen in Slow Jam. But beneath all those layers lies the classic Pulp, the same Jarvis Cocker obsessed with aging, singing desperately about love, and having discovered in this new phase environmentalism and meditation thanks to his current wife. That's what the eleven tracks with which the band signs their return are about, recorded in just 10 days in a London studio with James Ford, the producer of Arctic Monkeys, Florence + The Machine, and the latest albums of Blur, Depeche Mode, and Pet Shop Boys, at the helm. "People might say it didn't take much effort for us, but if something comes together quickly, it means it's ready, you're not forcing it.
There was no reason, after so long, to make a new album, no one had told us to release one or had hired us.
We decided ourselves, it seemed like a good idea, and here it is," explains Pulp's frontman with British irony and blunt reality. And Nick Banks continues, now recovered from his fit of laughter: "Despite our advanced age, we go so against the grain that if someone told us to do something, we probably wouldn't do it."
Q. Why have you decided now is the time to come back? And what has changed in Pulp?
J. C. When I first played the album for our label, Rough Trade, they said it was very appropriate for my age. No one had ever told me that in my life, and I took it as a compliment. One or two songs are old, but I think the album is not from 1995.
N. B. We're not going to sing about youth clubs or how to ride a chopper anymore. So, yes, I would say it's appropriate for this age. It will be interesting to see how these songs work on tour, if they feel different to the audience alongside the old songs.
Q. Youth, not aging, has always been one of your obsessions. Does music make you feel young again?
J. C. It's a very difficult question. There are more physical pains and annoyances now, but we're reasonably well. I like to think we still have enough youthful enthusiasm to get on stage. Even though we need more recovery time, it's great to be in a band because you feel like a magician. Everyone sitting in a studio, playing, and an hour later you've written a song that didn't exist. That excitement never gets old, and it's great that other people take things from my life and recognize themselves.
Q. I would like to insist on that fear of growing up, which is present again in this album. J. C. I've always been worried about aging, we wrote Help the Aged in 1996 and I wasn't that old then. No one likes to age because it means one day you will die. These lyrics are things I wrote on my phone over the last five or ten years, knowing that I was getting older, and I suppose that showed. But I actually prefer being older than young because, you know, you know yourself a bit better and you don't go around making a fool of yourself.
Q. In the first track of this album, 'Spike Island,' you sing: "This time I'll do it right," "neither a shaman, nor a showman, embarrassed selling the rights" or "I took a break and decided not to ruin my life." It sounds like you're seeking forgiveness for the previous stage of Pulp. Do you regret anything from that time?
J. C. I don't think it's an apology, but I know I didn't handle things very well when we became popular. And I've realized: I had certain expectations, I thought my life would change, but you don't magically change your life by becoming famous. And I think many people start bands thinking that being famous or making a lot of money will solve all their problems.
N. B. I think the problems are different and they change. You never know what's going to happen, and you just have to adapt. I don't think there's anything from the past that you should regret because you can't do anything about it. You just have to shrug, move on, and think, "I won't do that because it's going to hurt."
Q. Would you have liked, in that case, for that first stage to be different or to end differently?
J. C. Would I have liked it to be different? Definitely yes, but as Nick says, it's not going to be different now. And I'm glad that, even though some things didn't convince me, I still think the music we made was good and that probably led to this album. We reunited in 2011, and it still sounded good because we put a lot of our lives into those songs. Maybe too much. But when I played them again, the energy returned, and that led me to want to write new songs. I need energy to write, and I can't get it from those energy drinks. So I had to generate my own. Q. In 'Grown Ups,' you delve into that line again, mixed again with your youthful obsession
J. C. My grandfather was a gravedigger, and since I was little, I've been very aware of death because I saw the coffins he made.
N. B. And did you get inside them?
J. C. My cousins used to have fake burials for their dolls, it was a bit macabre. At that time, there were many small coffins because the infant mortality rate used to be quite high. So, in my family, we have been very aware of death. When you first realize that you are going to die when you are a child, it's a big thing, you discover that you are not just a spectator in life and that someday you will leave it. With Pulp, we have made Death Comes to Town, Death II... many songs about aging. Oh, maybe I was more obsessed with age and death when I was younger than now.
N. B. A part of being in a band is trying to avoid aging, checking that you can jump and do silly things without being young.
P. Blur is back, Oasis is back, and you are back. In that same theme, you sing "one last sunset, one last blaze of glory." Is that the feeling your generation is experiencing?
J. C. I hope not, and I don't think so. This album didn't have a clear concept, and that was on purpose. Having a clear concept and overthinking things is what ended Pulp. You can't control your life completely. But I can't say this will be the last thing we do because I never thought it would happen again.
N. B. Having a very clear concept is restrictive, and if something goes beyond that concept, you will discard it. If you keep it broad, anything goes.
P. The whole middle part of this album with 'Slow Jam,' 'Farmer Markets,' 'My Sex,' 'Got To Have Love'... Sounds like a heartfelt love song.
J. C. I hope love never dies because that would be the end of the human race. Falling in love with a person is not logical or premeditated, it's hard to define why you fall in love or, as in music, why a song excites you or leaves you cold. Love is the foundation of life, if you don't have it, it's very boring. Got To Have Love is an old lyric that I couldn't sing when I wrote it.
P. Why?
J. C. Because I didn't believe it well, I had just ended a very long relationship and didn't know where the heck I was in terms of love. But I think now, without love, you can't build anything good. And I think it's reasonable to say that because in many places, there are people who think love is not necessary, that there's no need for sex because we can clone people, not to get married or fall in love because everything will be a production line. So we have to fight for love.
N. B. We like these things to remain. We are physical beings and we want to keep loving each other. I'm a fan of dystopian movies, but it would be horrible if the world turned into a huge machine producing the same human beings.
J. C. I want to stop living in this dystopian world, I like a utopian future where nature is at the center. I feel that many of the modern problems are because people are misled about climate change and see nature as an enemy that will knock down their house or give them skin cancer.
P. What are Pulp's priorities? While preparing for this interview, I came across an article from a British newspaper where they said you were a mix of punk ideals with a pop spirit, talked a lot about gentrification, political issues, your disdain for the far right... and now all that is back.
N. B. The world situation is quite scary, and Jarvis said it in one of his solo albums: that jerks are still ruling the world and have no intention of letting go of control. Why, if you are the richest person in the world, would you want to be a complete idiot and not make the world a better place? I don't understand why, with the ability to eradicate global poverty, they simply don't do it.
J. C. The world is in a lamentable state right now, everything is ashes. Why do those people want to go to Mars at -200 degrees? I am totally in favor of those jerks going to colonize Mars and leaving Earth in the hands of those who want to improve it. That is one of our only solutions. That is my utopia, that they all go to space and we can stay here.
P. Do you consider Pulp to be a political band then?
J. C. We are not. I have written about political issues, but always from a personal perspective. I don't consider myself a political songwriter, but I think it's important to write about something that has happened to you and understand the world.
N. B. That being said, politics affects us all in some way. You may not write about overthrowing the system, but politics will affect you in some way.
J. C. When you start a band in Sheffield while it is completely devastated by Thatcher's government, with all the industry closed and full of unemployed people wondering what would become of their lives, there is an effect. That is within me as something personal. That's why it's important to delve into things rather than just read and let them go. That's what happens with the modern world, you see things and think you know them... and you've only seen representations. It's an elephant, until you encounter it in real life, you don't feel how big it is and how easily it can crush you.