You expect
the unexpected with Pulp. Just when we'd all finally grown to love those
bittersweet, poppy songs, they turned hardcore on us...at the Corn
Exchange, things were stranger still...the shortish set, two thirds taken
from This Is Hardcore, the remainder peppered with the ones the crowd really
wanted to hear like Babies, Sorted for E's and Wizz, and Do You Remember
the First Time? And some of it sounded rather marvellous. This Is Hardcore
was all twisted, nasty glory; Party Hard was lifted by the live
performance into something much stronger than the album track. The Day
After The Revolution, with Jarvis against a backdrop of an open sky, felt
just like that (EH???? They didn't play The Day After The Revolution! Get
your facts right, Ms Mahoney!! That's enough of that! - Ed). (Elisabeth
Mahoney, The Guardian, 28.8.00)
The
band's revitalized self confidence was demonstrated just two songs into
the set with the first public airing of Weeds (apart from the other first
public airing two days earlier at the Garage - Ed) , one of five new
compositions previewed here. 'Weeds' is classic Cocker, a witty
metaphorical meditation on one of the singer's favourite themes, social outcasts.
This was followed by Birds in Your Garden, a slow burning ballad in which
Cocker revisited another familiar theme, the fraught etiquette of carnal
relations. Both of these horticultural epics sound like future
anthems. The good news is that Pulp still possess the ability to pen
heart-stopping pop tunes, but remain prickly and ambitious enough to
continue stretching their limited musical palette...(Stephen Dalton,
The Times, 26.8.00)
(photo by Rich Bradley)
