PULP, MORE

In 2019, Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker was commissioned to write a song for a play about a woman watching her children from beyond the grave. At the time, his own son was preparing to leave home, and Cocker found himself channeling that personal anxiety into the song. Titled “Hymn of the North,” the track sparked something dormant.

He was emerging from a turbulent period marked by the passing of his mother and longtime bandmate Steve Mackey, as well as a yearlong separation and eventual reunion with his wife. During that time apart, Cocker began confronting the clutter he had accumulated over decades, boxes of belongings from his youth, long stored away and gathering dust. He started photographing the objects, trying to remember why they had once mattered. But the deeper realization came quietly: “I thought I'd rather hang out with people than with objects.” From that moment of clarity, More began to take shape.

Pulp’s music has always thrived on contradiction and refusal to conform. Cocker’s songwriting, in particular, has pushed against the stylized portrayals of love and desire he grew up hearing in pop music, songs that felt disconnected from his own experiences. He has always loved the form and drama of the pop song but has made it his mission to subvert it, to insert truths that feel awkward, conflicted, or raw. More is all of that. It is open-hearted and crooked, lush and unvarnished. Songs like “Got To Have Love” burst with gospel-like energy, while tracks like “Tina” and “My Sex” explore the strange, often uncomfortable dynamics of desire and disconnection.

With its shift in focus from nostalgia and memory to presence and connection, and with themes of love, aging, alienation, and what it means to be different and remain outside, More is a different kind of Pulp album, one that could only come with time. It captures something vulnerable and unresolved. What if the place you thought you were meant to be doesn’t exist? What if stardom doesn’t fix anything? What if growing up just means learning how to live with those questions? Cocker doesn’t pretend to have the answers. But with More, he and Pulp have made an album that faces those questions, not with sentimentality, but with clarity, wit, and edge. It's 100 percent Pulp.