Jarvis Cocker pulls some grapes out of his jacket pocket and tosses them into the crowd. He has chocolates in his other pocket, which he shares out too. You imagine his pockets are always full of little snacks, just in case he feels peckish on the bus or, y’know, mid-arena concert. Top up the old blood sugar. Being sensible is a much underrated quality in a rock star.
But then Jarvis has always done things his own way. Sheffield’s ‘weed in tweed’ with his charity shop clothes and NHS glasses who formed his weird little indie band in the 80s with a John Peel session the primary goal, but then went on to serious pop stardom in the 90s, all the while singing about underwear and broken biscuits and woodchipped walls and trying not to get your head kicked in in town on a Saturday night. And don’t we just love it. Don’t we just love him.
Pulp’s O2 shows have coincided with them hitting the number one spot for their new album More, and the spectacular staging feels like a grand celebration, with lasers, confetti, string sections, mega-screens, giant wavey balloon men, and an atmosphere somewhere between a wedding disco and an illegal rave.
But at the centre of it all, Jarvis his usual self, with the grapes and the chocolates, and chatting like he’s presenting the Bingo at his local leisure centre. At one point he prepares to toss a grape into his own mouth, but as the crowd gives it a ‘Woooah’ to build up to the toss, he scolds them: “You’re putting me off.” Anyway, he misses, but picks it up off the floor, rubs it clean, eats it.
“You don’t need a big house, or a big car,” he says, when introducing newie Got To Have Love, “What do you need...?” And everyone knows the answer.
Yes in a time when it’s all Win Win Win, power in the boardroom, the art of the deal, crypto and tech bros, and the monetising of yourself on social media before you’ve even hit puberty, it’s nice to be reminded of a different way of approaching life. Not killing one another for cash but finding something that you love, and doing that instead, and seeing what happens.
If Pulp are about anything, it is surely that. Dreaming, staying true, standing outside the crowd as a mis-shape and retaining a bit of love in your heart.
As such, this show is a bit of a nostalgia-fest for the weepy oldies but also very much needed right now. Pulp are more relevant than ever.
The new songs sound fantastic in this setting. Opener Spike Island suddenly makes sense as an immediate Pulp classic, one in which Jarvis considers his own position, being born to perform, ‘It’s a calling/I exist to do this/ Shouting and pointing.’ Grown Ups is a winningly meandering ode to lost youth, recalling a night back in 1985 trying to meet a girl before rambling on about a dream of a space mission, before insisting, “I am not aging, no, I am ripening.”
Jarvis is pulling Jarvis shapes all the while, that angular, all elbows, wizard of weird style that feels as iconic as Michael Jackson’s moonwalk (a fart in his general direction, by the way (and let’s not forget that while Jarvis was traumatised at his subsequent tabloid fame after that Brits incident, he also became a folk hero to most of the nation)).
Sorted for E’s and Whizz comes with the backing musicians dressed a bunch of ravers with whistles and bucket hats, a tune about finding parties in the woods that could never be written now because we all have Google Maps; plus no-one does Whizz anymore.
Jarvis conducts the crowd to sing Happy Birthday to bassist Andrew McKinney, before dedicating the next song to him, which deliciously turns out to be Help The Aged. It sounds enormous tonight. As does Sunrise, the standout from their least celebrated album We Love Life, with guitarist Mark Webber blowing off any remaining cobwebs with his outro solo.
There is an interval. Novel for a gig. A nightmare for bar staff. But, heck, we’re getting on a bit and the pacemakers are working overtime. Plus the breather sets up a killer second half, which begins with the original members of the band - Webber plus an ever cool Candida Doyle and drummer Nick Banks; Steve Mackey who died in 2023 is given a nice shout-out - doing an acoustic Something Changed, with Jarvis revealing it was the first song they played in one of their living rooms when they decided to regroup.
What follows is a reminder of the sheer glory of what they can all produce together. Do You Remember the First Time? leads into Mis-Shapes before Babies and then Common People create a breathless end to the night.
It is a triumphant show, Jarvis in excelsis, Pulp still coming up with brilliant songs, doing their own thing. In a year when Oasis are reforming, it’s tempting to see all this as retrogressive, but it’s a simple a reminder that we all love big characters and there’s not that many around now. We like Liam. We like Jarvis. We like these little maniacs growing up in council houses and somehow making their dreams come true by sheer force of personality. Is it even possible today in the time-draining, soul-sucking, screen economy?
Probably. You’d hope. But how many will carry grapes in their pockets? Exactly.
