Pulp are back for More. The Britpop maestros, whose influence surpassed the 1990s scene and cast a spell on indie-pop for decades to come, will return with their follow-up to 2001’s We Love Life on June 6. More, out via their new label home, Rough Trade, was recorded at London’s Orbb Studio over three weeks of November 2024 with producer James Ford. “This is the shortest amount of time a Pulp album has ever taken to record,” Jarvis Cocker writes in a statement. “It was obviously ready to happen.” Watch the video for the single “Spike Island,” directed by Cocker himself, below.
The video, says Cocker in a press release, is an inquiry into A.I. via the repurposing of Rankin & Donald’s photographs from the Different Class inlay. He fed the pictures into an A.I. app to “see where the computer led” him, typing in prompts such as, “The black & white figure remains still whilst the bus in the background drives off.” He adds, “The weekend I began work on the video was a strange time: I went out of the house & kept expecting weird transformations of the surrounding environment due to the images the computer had been generating. The experience had marked me. I don’t know whether I’ve recovered yet……” He concludes, “My final thought? H.I. Forever!”
More features contributions from Richard Hawley and Jason Buckle, who composed music for one song apiece, as well as the Eno family, who sing backing vocals on one song. Richard Jones arranged strings for the Elysian Collective to perform.
Of the album, Cocker adds:
