Also, something that has just occurred to me. Is the "Permanent Darkness Remix" of the title track an official remix or just a bootleg? There are some comments on it here: jamiesrunoutgroove.blogspot.com/2006/05/mp3-pulp-this-is-hardcore-permanent.html

I'm asking this because the original only samples the trumpet loop from the Peter Thomas track but this one contains more of it. I don't have a clue how it works but I presume that the band only sought permission to use the trumpet loop.

Simply Fuss Free wrote:

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The CD arrived in the my post a week before its official release date, which made me feel very special and smug. Didn't know what to make of the album though.

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Still don't?!  You're gonna like it but not a lot... 

In January 1999 my Mum took me to see the Andy Warhol exhibition at the MCA in Sydney. I also had a $50 voucher to MYERs because I got a refund on my SeaChange series on VHS that on mass hadn't been transferred over correctly. I remember Mum talking to the MYER women and that they had a lot of returns. So with that $50 voucher I got This is Hardcore and This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours. As we drove back from Sydney I was sheepishly flicking through the sleeve - keeping it hidden because it was probably something that was not for my 13-14 year old eyes.

Here's my reimagining of TIH. I know Nick says its dense in parts - not sure if he meant the title track or the album - but I love how its overblown-ness.

1.The Fear (The Complete And Utter Breakdown Version)
2. Dishes
3. It's A Dirty World
4. Party Hard - the single mix where Candida's keyboards in the chorus are more punchier and not so lost
5. Ladies Man
6. This Is Hardcore (End of the Line Mix) - like the gigs + spending so much on orchestration?
7. This Is Hardcore
8. The Professional
9. Seductive Barry - but like the Glastonbury 1998 mix - more dub-by - more wah wah - less thin sounding
10. Like A Friend
11. The Day After The Revolution - I have no idea why I like this song so much but the ending I've always found slightly optimistic - dark days are over - light at the end of the tunnel - vibes.

As I write this I am flicking through the catalogue for 'Peter Saville Estate 1-127' exhibition which has a few outtakes from the TIH session as styled by John Currin, Horst Diekgerdes and Peter Saville. Should scan this in for the wiki if its not.

Some great track listings here. Fully agree on Laughing Boy as an underrated gem. I dont like Sylvia, but I can see the calculation in having it on there as a meat and potatoes counterpoint to the artier songs. But how TV Movie made it against some of the b-sides is a real puzzler. Its three little song squibs roped together for no good reason.

That said, Im a big Day After the Revolution fan which seems a minority opinion, so what do any of know really!

Hold on. Ive just had a couple of glasses of wine and listened to Sylvia all the way through for the first time in about 20 years. Its pretty good! im now going to be livid if not on the Finsbury Park setlist. 

Got to agree. Not to just lay into the album, but I was surprised with how safe some of it was- key to this is the fact that The Professional (really my favourite song of this era) was left as a B side- it's more imaginative, interesting and insightful than a lot of the album tracks. The LP had been talked up as a more technology-oriented progression but always seemed uneven and sometimes pedestrian to me with those Bowie pastiches, Smoky Robinson and even a Beatles reference on the Day After the Revolution. You can hear the positive influence of Portishead in Steve's bass line for Help the Aged, the production of the title track and Seductive Barry was interesting but those lyrics left a lot to be desired and it all seemed like a fairly confused but solidly produced missed opportunity. And damn, releasing A Little Soul as a single and putting out Party Hard that late in the day with the worst sleeves Pulp had ever had were seriously bad moves. Nevertheless, nice songs.

Ooooo I love a good old dream setlist thread.....here's my dream TIH album.

1 - Its A Dirty World
2 - TV Movie
3 - A Little Soul
4 - Tommorow Never Lies
5 - Like A Friend
6- This Is Hardcore
7 - Sylvia
8 - Laughing Boy
9 - Help The Aged
10 - Dishes
11 - Glory Days
12 - Day Of The Revolution

Controversial ......yes...... The Fear, Im A Man, Seductive Barry would all be B Sides for me.

I'd say "Cocaine Socialism" is a great song but perhaps a bit too bombastic to have been a single. I think that it would have been dropped from the live set in 2000 (that said, "Common People", "Mis-Shapes" and "Disco 2000" were dropped by 2001) and excluded from "Hits".

These are Mark's comments on the title track:
I was never a very big fan of this song. I can appreciate that it's good work, but I never really liked it from the outset. Jarvis didn't want people to expect an album of Common People and Disco 2000. He wanted to redraw the boundaries, and recently it's been a case of Jarvis' will overriding everyone else's common sense.

He certainly has a positive influence on this album. It's interesting to speculate how it would have sounded if Russell had stayed in the band.

I think "Laughing Boy" is fantastic but not sure if it would have worked on the album. "The Professional" should have been on there without a doubt.

All they needed at this time was a big hit single. The first three were never going to be massive and the public had lost interest by the time "Party Hard" came out. I know Jarvis was quite vocal about redrawing the boundaries but even "Glory Days" does this, it doesn't have the same singalong aspect of "Common People" but it would have easily been a number 1 single.

I remember someone once saying that "The Fear" should have been a single. Sure, it's all doom and gloom (and a fantastic song) but it does, for the first part, have a verse/chorus structure. I don't think it would have been an outright disaster if it was edited down.

I too remember hearing that it had the working title "Hardchord" or was it "Hardcord"? There weren't really any local music papers round here so I would have read that in one of the mainstreams.

Ian wrote:

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I'd say "Cocaine Socialism" is a great song but perhaps a bit too bombastic to have been a single. I think that it would have been dropped from the live set in 2000 (that said, "Common People", "Mis-Shapes" and "Disco 2000" were dropped by 2001) and excluded from "Hits".

These are Mark's comments on the title track:
I was never a very big fan of this song. I can appreciate that it's good work, but I never really liked it from the outset. Jarvis didn't want people to expect an album of Common People and Disco 2000. He wanted to redraw the boundaries, and recently it's been a case of Jarvis' will overriding everyone else's common sense.

He certainly has a positive influence on this album. It's interesting to speculate how it would have sounded if Russell had stayed in the band.

I think "Laughing Boy" is fantastic but not sure if it would have worked on the album. "The Professional" should have been on there without a doubt.

All they needed at this time was a big hit single. The first three were never going to be massive and the public had lost interest by the time "Party Hard" came out. I know Jarvis was quite vocal about redrawing the boundaries but even "Glory Days" does this, it doesn't have the same singalong aspect of "Common People" but it would have easily been a number 1 single.

I remember someone once saying that "The Fear" should have been a single. Sure, it's all doom and gloom (and a fantastic song) but it does, for the first part, have a verse/chorus structure. I don't think it would have been an outright disaster if it was edited down.

I too remember hearing that it had the working title "Hardchord" or was it "Hardcord"? There weren't really any local music papers round here so I would have read that in one of the mainstreams.

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Hehe thanx for confirming my memory about the album working title. 25 years is a long time...

I'd say about the singles that they were the perfect choice. Maybe except Party Hard. But TIH (the song) made sense, it was the biggest track on the record, the most ambitious, and the symbol of TIH (the album) and what they were trying to say. It was only possible in the 90s though, to release a track like that as main single.

Career suicide ? Maybe not, i mean 25 years later, Pulp has made history. It took time, but TIH is now very respected. Is it career suicide when you want to get away from the light, from fame and just make music for a fanbase that will really appreciate your work (trimming down the fat of the casual fans) ? Been there, done that once. Once is enough. Back to the real thing... 

Help the Aged worked as a teaser. Probably the most britpoppy track. And A little Soul has a really strong message.

It would have been a shame too if TIH video had never been made. It's a great piece of work on its own. 

-- Edited by andy on Sunday 2nd of April 2023 09:50:09 AM

-- Edited by andy on Sunday 2nd of April 2023 11:58:13 AM

Sleeve - could you make an album's worth of songs from the TIH sessions that would make you not yearn for Senior?

I never missed Russell Senior to be honest. Sure he brought the VU style to Pulp, but to be honest i prefered his guitar playing over his violin.

The violin is a very specific instrument and it can become a bit tiresome used that way. His departure allowed the band to explore unexplored territories.

Hmmmm ok, mine's boring tho'.

The Fear
The Professional
This is Hardcore
Seductive Barry (I liked the live Finsbury Park version a little more)
Party Hard
Dirty World (more production, could've been a single)
Help the Aged
Glory Days
Day After the Revolution
TIH (End of the Line Mix)

See! That's a whole album right there.

Now, Sturdy, another Hardcore-naysayer, should have a turn.

Mine goes like this:

1 The Fear (Breakdown Version)
2 Dishes
3 Party Hard
4 Help the Aged
5 It's a Dirty World
6 This is Hardcore
7 A Little Soul (Alternative Mix From The Single)
8 TV Movie
9 I'm a Man
10 Sylvia
11 Cocaine Socialism
12 TIH (End Of The Line)

Never got into seductive Barry, it doesnt do anything for me even live

Eamonn wrote:

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Also, curious what production choices (without getting too technical!) you'd make on Dirty World. Already pretty bombastic and fully-formed unless you mean you'd prefer it dialled down a little.

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I remember the first time i heard it. Thought it sounded nothing like the rest of TIH songs. Now the feeling has faded away but it really struck me. Maybe it needed to be a bit more organic. If you know what i mean. Like the rest of the record, with more guitar and less synthetic instruments. 

Well for me... I'm not trying to "fix" this is hardcore. It's my favorite Pulp album the way it was released, over Different Class. Simple.

BUT, i'd say they had enough material for a double album + bsides. Although, not rewriting history... to their defense, bsides were important back then, and you had to have quality bsides to be a top band. There was that pressure too to release en EP every 3 months.

Still, the time was right to do it : there's a lot of double albums that sold quite well in the 90s.

Pulp had enough good songs, with all the unfinished demos, to make it their masterpiece. It already is to me, but a double masterpiece it could have been.

If you're going to "destroy yourself" (I dont think they did, they had to do it), then why not do it 200% ?

And The white album doesnt need fixing either :D ;)

It is on YouTube
youtu.be/kNI0SVRpnJU

Ian wrote:

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It is on YouTube
youtu.be/kNI0SVRpnJU

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 Thank you! I'm going to rip the audio track and listen to it later. 

Wise words. It's been years since I've heard it all the way through- got to give it a go again soon.

Sturdy wrote:

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It's funny how even all these years later, we're trying to 'fix' This Is Hardcore.

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Not sure why as IMHO it is Pulps finest hour.  Well their finest hour and 10 minutes or so if you havent stopped prior to the end of The Day After The Revolution.  The sum is better than the parts, I couldnt imagine a revised track list, it just works for me as it is.  Very like Dog Man Star, STATIONTOSTATION or Blackstar.   

Eamonn wrote:

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I thought a common criticism of the album from the get-go was that the final songs gave a false happy-ending cop-out to the record. I've rarely seen Glory Days and Revolution been praised by hacks.

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I do recall that the NME really liked both tracks, and so did Melody Maker. Andrew Harrison, writing for Select, said that they were "two genius songs", which I think is what I was remembering.

-- Edited by lipglossed on Thursday 6th of April 2023 01:56:59 AM

Wouldn't you even shake your booty to Party Hard?

lipglossed wrote:

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Not much of a booty for me to wiggle!

But yes, Party Hard is a great song live - just not one I'd necessarily pick if I could choose others. Which is a problem the album suffers from more broadly, being - in my opinion - greater than the sum of its parts, and all that. You can't remove the tracks from their context so much and listen to them in isolation - they don't work as well.

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But why though ? Albums are a world on their own. I rarely listen to single track from any band. Most of the time i press play on the record, and the bsides. And rarely stop before the journey is done. This could be said for a numerous of other tracks from other records as well. Would you listen to Manon on its own ? Nah. It's like putting the minute 25 to 28 on the godfather or something. Makes no sense to listen to single tracks most of the time, when the band is good (not talking about pop music). You dont listen to a single track from dark side of the moon, or sgt pepper. You take the whole thing in. That's usually a sign of a strong record. 

Why the hate for TIH here ? Didn't know it was that despised by hardcore Pulp fans (pun intended !) 

I F love it personally, huge and ambitious record. It was a slap in the face for me, and a damn good one. 25 years later it's praised in the medias as it should have been when it was released. 

-- Edited by andy on Friday 7th of April 2023 07:55:04 AM

Eamonn wrote:

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It's not hated, Andy, a lot of us love it and those who struggle with it, still admire many aspects of it.

I think the general consensus over the years has been lukewarm reviews (very strong first half, tails-off on side two) and it's only these retrospectives that started to creep in, over the last five years or so, that really go hard with praise for it. That is interesting in its self, as if it's now cooler just to say good things about Pulp which was certainly not the case between 1998 and 2002.

-- Edited by Eamonn on Friday 7th of April 2023 11:05:08 AM

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It wasn't cool to like Pulp in Britain in the 90s ? I didn't live there so can't say really. 

I think in the end good records always find a way to get the recognition they should have had in the first place. History has way of placing people and things back where they should have been.

It's no surprise to me that TIH is slowly but surely going up the ladder. It might not be what "early" Pulp fans like best, but it is their masterpiece. It's one step up DC which is already a masterpiece on its own.

As for the second half of the record... well I gotta say i love it ! Sure, maybe there's a lot of lighter tunes and maybe Sylvia could have been dropped in favor of Like a Friend. But Glory Days and the Day After the Revolution are two favorites of mine. I dont feel the way you guys do about those songs. 

I like how Pulp records made me think, about life, how to behave with other, grow up... and TIH was the BIG think for me. More than any other record ever made i gotta say. Each lines makes you want to stop and say "eh ! I didn't see it that way..."

How can you not like lines "I could be a genius, If I just put my mind to it", or "we were brought up on the Space-Race, Now they expect you to clean toilets". It's typical Jarvis lines that no one else could come up with. It's genius. Really. he put his mind to it. 

Maybe that's just a theory... TIH is a bit less british musically, if you know what i mean. It sounds more "international". Maybe that's what makes some of you struggle with it ? His n Hers is very british for instance. DC too, but a bit less. And then there's this record that further erase the "british sound". 

 

andy wrote:

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lipglossed wrote:

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Not much of a booty for me to wiggle!

But yes, Party Hard is a great song live - just not one I'd necessarily pick if I could choose others. Which is a problem the album suffers from more broadly, being - in my opinion - greater than the sum of its parts, and all that. You can't remove the tracks from their context so much and listen to them in isolation - they don't work as well.

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But why though ? Albums are a world on their own. I rarely listen to single track from any band. Most of the time i press play on the record, and the bsides. And rarely stop before the journey is done. This could be said for a numerous of other tracks from other records as well. Would you listen to Manon on its own ? Nah. It's like putting the minute 25 to 28 on the godfather or something. Makes no sense to listen to single tracks most of the time, when the band is good (not talking about pop music). You dont listen to a single track from dark side of the moon, or sgt pepper. You take the whole thing in. That's usually a sign of a strong record. 

Why the hate for TIH here ? Didn't know it was that despised by hardcore Pulp fans (pun intended !) 

I F love it personally, huge and ambitious record. It was a slap in the face for me, and a damn good one. 25 years later it's praised in the medias as it should have been when it was released. 

-- Edited by andy on Friday 7th of April 2023 07:55:04 AM

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 You make a good point - albums are cohesive units, that's the point of them. Any good album works best in one sitting. Stuff like Demon Days, OK Computer, Dark Side of the Moon - it's meant to be more than the sum of its parts, especially if it's a concept album like Hardcore is.

My issue with Hardcore is that when you remove those songs from their context, they get slightly exposed, moreover than other Pulp records. They're very... particular. I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing - if anything, it makes the record more compelling - but it gives them a bit of baggage. You have to wrestle with the band's (read: Jarv's) sense of dysfunction, which imposes itself all over the music. It's a little unsettling, the undercurrent of self-loathing hidden under otherwise innocuous-sounding songs like A Little Soul and TV Movie. I have to confess that it always takes me out of it a little.

And, ironically, that might be its greatest strength.

I really like Hardcore. It has plenty of very good tracks, and one landmark fantastic song that dominates the rest of the album so much that the rest can sometimes feel like excessive thematic restatement, even though it shouldn't. I just also like to get my teeth into it. I mean, H&H also has its share of criticisms, and while I think DC is more consistent, it doesn't have the emotional highs of H&H or Hardcore.

Basically, I think Jarvis needed less control of the tracklist. And maybe some sudafed because he sounds a bit bunged up at times, bless him (whenever I hear the start of I'm A Man, I do think he's about to sneeze). But it's an excellent album, if a thematically incomplete one.

-- Edited by lipglossed on Friday 7th of April 2023 03:18:36 PM

Well, exactly. No hits after 1996 (Help The Aged and TIH the single did chart well in their opening week due to the fanbase but didnt hang around, meaning the general public didnt really buy them) meaning increasingly poor chart positions and the albums (Hardcore, Life and Hitz) under-performing too, commercially.

Selling a fraction of the records that you once did, meant major labels got twitchy back then. Island had been taken over by Universal by the time WLL came out and they only begrudgingly allowed Pulp to release a second single from the album.

 

Maybe they should have put out After You in 2000 around the time they played Leeds/Reading. It's hard to find anything too chart-friendly or poppy from 1998 onwards that they released/recorded. Sunrise is great live but as a single, I don't think it was ever going to catch fire - too long, a repeated instrumental final four minutes and no vocal hook.

-- Edited by Eamonn on Friday 7th of April 2023 05:02:26 PM

Half-empty is maybe a bit exaggerated, but that's how I remember press reports describing the tour. They were arenas/large leisure centres so there still would have been a couple of thou' in attendance (kind of tickles me that they played a leisure centre somewhere random like Hereford).

Kind of suited the atmosphere of Hardcore though - dark, cavernous spaces.

Kelvin wrote:

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In terms of critical perception at the time, I think they also just took a bit too long to get this out. If theyd been mid-97 it could have been at the vanguard of the Britpop backlash. By 98 they were a victim of it. Superficial point, but having been an older band in the first place could not have helped. 

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 If they release this in 97, it gets critically received as a partner piece to OK Computer and everyone raves about it. Seriously, I think the two would've been associated by dint of their bleak subject matter and the fact each album has a remarkable long, experimental track. We'd be talking about Pulp's masterpiece.

But then, it'd have been a much different album without that year in the oven. I think they needed to get down to business sooner and maybe spent too much time touring to try and double down their celebrity status - then everyone needed to recover, Russell upped and left, and we got Hardcore.

As for them being an older band - it's stupidly superficial, but I honestly think that releasing Help the Aged can't have helped them appear sexy and young in the fickle eyes of the public. The only single they had for a good year, and it's Jarvis singing about how he's an old duffer. (That's if you take an uncharitable and oversimplistic view of it, which you naturally would if you were in the music press.)

It's easy for us to say there were lessons for them to learn, though... none of us were in Pulp. We basically have an album about how being a popstar causes a colossal fucking crisis. I doubt we'd have been thinking "god, I need to get a second opinion on the tracklisting" if we were in Jarvis's position in 1997.

 

Eamonn wrote:

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Well, exactly. No hits after 1996 (Help The Aged and TIH the single did chart well in their opening week due to the fanbase but didnt hang around, meaning the general public didnt really buy them) meaning increasingly poor chart positions and the albums (Hardcore, Life and Hitz) under-performing too, commercially.

Selling a fraction of the records that you once did, meant major labels got twitchy back then. Island had been taken over by Universal by the time WLL came out and they only begrudgingly allowed Pulp to release a second single from the album.

 

Maybe they should have put out After You in 2000 around the time they played Leeds/Reading. It's hard to find anything too chart-friendly or poppy from 1998 onwards that they released/recorded. Sunrise is great live but as a single, I don't think it was ever going to catch fire - too long, a repeated instrumental final four minutes and no vocal hook.

-- Edited by Eamonn on Friday 7th of April 2023 05:02:26 PM

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The issue is that there was hooky stuff. Candy herself said that there were songs that could've been massive that they intentionally left off. And Jarvis himself has owned up to being intentionally perverse.

If they released Like a Friend when they'd made it - rather than just using it for the movie - it could've been huge. It's a stomper. A potential karaoke staple.

We Are The Boyz is another one. Really simplistic lyrics - in fact, some of Jarv's weakest - but it literally does not matter because it sounds fun! It sounds so much fun. They used to end the last encore with it when they toured Hardcore, and now I wish it had been on the album. It would have been such a riot live. We have I'm A Man instead, which is still a great track but has a reputation (in part due to Finsbury) for being less good live. It's the refined version of We Are The Boyz's criticism of masculinity, but I actually think the cruder song is the more effective. When he sings "We WERE the boyz", it really clicks. (The name is a bit rubbish though - should've just called it Boys. You can even thumb a wink at Blur's grating laddishness that way.)

Glory Days is one they had at an early stage (Northern Souls) and they could've ushered that along quicker - then that's your potential lead single.

Then again, I have a few weird opinions when it comes to Hardcore. Not just in my disavowal of Party Hard (which, to be fair, I've been a bit harsh on - I still like it), but also I really don't care for It's a Dirty World. I also think Help the Aged would've been better on Side 2 - because it'd be closer to the emotional heart of the album, it would hit a bit harder given everything before it, and because it would prompt a more organic resolution (as in: enjoy the now and find what matters in your life now, and stick to it). Party Hard - Help the Aged - Sylvia, as the first three tracks on Side 2 - that'd work much better than the current arrangement, where you sit through TV Movie and A Little Soul before I'm A Man comes along.

Pye wrote:

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With regards to This Is Hardcore- at the time it came out, I had the His n Hers and the Different Class albums- after listening to it, it made me curious on what else Pulp had released, so i started to hunt down their older albums- the point im trying to make is that if it wasnt for This Is Hardcore, I might not have been interested in their earlier stuff. This Is Hardcore is a great album- better than We Love Life (in my opinion)

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 To me, it comes closer to Freaks than anything they'd done since Separations.

Yeah, its a bit like Sunrise in structure but with a great last vocal section. Noot sure if that would have been enough to give it copious radio-play.

Having said that, from nowhere it gained huge interest/streams from featuring on a US adult cartoon 10-15 years ago and I think the band must have noticed this to dust it off for the first reunion, even playing it on US chat-show TV.

It doesn't have a chorus proper though. Help The Aged does. I meant that like Sunrise, it (Like A Friend) has a quiet intro and verse and a long instrumental section. But then the powerhouse last part when the vocals come back in. I'm not sure whether that would have been enough for the Radio One playlisters.

-- Edited by Eamonn on Monday 10th of April 2023 11:45:33 PM

Me too, it's great!

I think it's partly the Sheffield thing - hard to impress. If it's good, it's just "alright". The Monkeys are like this as well, in fairness.

Pulp taking over a decade to get any traction and not having virtuoso musicians in their ranks, probably had a contradictory effect of an inferiority complex with a battle-hardened determination.

Simply Fuss Free wrote:

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Also just want to take moment to recognise TIH's most underrated tune: the oft forgotten "Day After the Revolution", which is really quite a good song that I think people rarely listen to in this streaming era due to the (admittedly annoying) 14 minute outro. I don't think DATR has ever been performed live, which is a shame because I could imagine it being quite a barn-storming rocker on stage- imagine an encore where DATR transitions into Sunrise- could work brilliantly. I am hoping the band dust it off for this tour, as obviously, it's the perfect career capstone. 

-- Edited by Simply Fuss Free on Saturday 15th of April 2023 04:31:27 AM

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 Also, end-of-the-album tracks don't get much streaming-era play because people play the whole album but end up doing something else before it's ended. Because modern attention spans are rubbish (I mean my own is!)

I've seen it said that Jarv is not a fan of DATR. But only on Twitter mind.

Eamonn wrote:

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I think it's partly the Sheffield thing - hard to impress. If it's good, it's just "alright". The Monkeys are like this as well, in fairness.

Pulp taking over a decade to get any traction and not having virtuoso musicians in their ranks, probably had a contradictory effect of an inferiority complex with a battle-hardened determination.

 

Hm. I remember people saying that We Love Life must've been a real disappointment for this same reason. A real, undeserved fizzling out (especially Hits flopping in the charts as well!) that really can't have helped any sense of inferiority. Magna was a bit of a sad ending.

 

-- Edited by lipglossed on Sunday 16th of April 2023 01:57:04 PM

Interesting thoughts....have to think about it.

Dirty World after The Fear would make a great track two. More fear and loathing in Lambeth.

Listening to Glory Days again. I know I've moaned a a little about Jarvis's vocals here and there, or how Chris Thomas's production treats them, but on Glory Days, Jarvis gives an excellent performance. Really love how he sings after the key change especially, it's real pop-star stuff.

Jean wrote:

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It's an album I grew to love a few years later and I see it as a brave move now but I'm sure it must have lost that age cohort.

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At some point, artists have to move on. Intro, His n Hers and Different Class were all very good LPs, but a fourth LP of the same ilk was not necessary.  Much like Bowie finally killed off Ziggy with Young Americans and Station To Station and became even more beguiling, Pulp had to do similar.  blur, 19 and Think Tank moved blur on as Pulp did with Hardcore and We Love Life and makes their discographies more compelling than say Oasis who were about trying to recapture the first two LPs with diminishing returns.  

I think TIH is a fine record, and I love it, but if we're going to talk about how Pulp developed their sound - and whether they were right in contriving to lose their audience - it's worth asking if they ever actually found a new one.

Did they just want the acclaim of Jarvis and Steve's arty Camden crowd? Did they conflate being financially unsuccessful with artistic success? It's one thing to deliberately repudiate fame because you don't want fame - it's another to make a whole album that's basically a grand artistic statement and then weaken said artistic statement by making decisions that actively reduced its exposure.

We do talk - and I've spoken about this upthread, in my usual longwinded manner - about how Hardcore is flawed, but without those flaws, it wouldn't be Hardcore; you can't make a perfect tracklist with your favourite tracks (although it's tempting) because, like the White Album or something, the soul of the album lives in its existence as a messy, flawed but brightly burnished record, it's the sound of the band falling apart and to that end it's a manifestation of the band falling apart, it's cause-and-effect.

So Hardcore's weaknesses are sort of inevitable, they're the consequences of a deeply damaged yet hugely creative band trying to make a grandiose statement but not-quite-selling-it because of their (frontman's) tortured relationship with fame... and that's what makes Hardcore what it is.

So, was the issue - and I'm not saying there necessarily was one - not with what the album This Is Hardcore was, but that it was This Is Hardcore in the first place? Was it really the right album to make? Was a desperate dive into the scrubbiest corners of Jarvis Cocker's psyche, dredging up the traumas fame bestowed of Pulp, strung-out and yelping about porn, coke, death, middle age and maleness, actually the right call to make? Instead of pumping it all into an album, should Jarvis have just seen a therapist? Should they have adjourned earlier - could they possibly have preserved their inter-band relationships? probably not, but still - could they have produced something more musically refined, something where the influences they've picked up (like Portishead) are used a bit more subtly? 

A band isn't a commercial prospect, and Pulp shouldn't make art for money; the art they make shouldn't be made with the aim of commercial success. But nor should it be made with the intent of commercial failure. There isn't much value in the martyrdom of career suicide other than as some sort of grand indie gesture. The trouble is that people want to hear your records. Maybe this isn't cynical enough, but perhaps if Pulp put out some sharper singles post-96, more people could've heard their album and loved it. And then those people might have more than two Pulp albums to listen to... OK, that sounds entitled.

These are open-ended questions, by the way. I don't have a view of the answer. I do think it's a really good album, and the title track we'd be weaker without. But there are a lot of 'what-ifs?'. Stephen's glorious Russell interview I'm typing up mentions, among other things, that Russell actually approved of the artistic direction Hardcore went in (having feared it'd be more ballads). It's an interesting conundrum.

lipglossed wrote:

I think TIH is a fine record, and I love it, but if we're going to talk about how Pulp developed their sound - and whether they were right in contriving to lose their audience - it's worth asking if they ever actually found a new one.

 

Obviously they never found a new audience.  And alienated a large chunk of the audience gained with Different Class.  However, my thinking is that they reinforced some of their existing audience (self included). The ones that matter

Its hard to think of many bands that cultivated a new audience with a change in direction.  The worst example I have (and I am going back a long way) is UB40 who were pretty outspoken and politicised at the outset only to turn into a covers band releasing everything and anything to be popular.  

Going back to the Bowie comparison post Rebel Rebel, he only had three top ten UK singles off the next 5 LPs.  Heroes peaked at #24. Fame at #18 (though #1 in US).   Young Americans, Station To Station, Low, Heroes and Lodger appealed to fewer and fewer though he was fortunate to have had a very large audience in the first place.  But retrospectively, Low and Station To Station are now considered to be among his finest albums and the other three are all part of his great work in the 1970s.

PS Heroes went silver in 2016, gold in 2018 and platinum in 2020.  Sold very few physical copies in 1977.

A Little Soul (from The Tracks Of My Tears).

Ian wrote:

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andy wrote:

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Probably the only album i listened from start to finish on headphones at my virgin megastore few days before the release. I remember standing in front of those listening boxes for like an hour (well the whole duration of the record) whilst people where shopping, passing by. Weird and hypnotic experience to have that music in my ears for the first time and the whole going by in front of me.


then on release day, lunch time in high school, time to take the bus and go buy the CD and vinyl version with all those extra tracks. What a time it was the 90s for music...


To this day, still probably one of the top 5 disc i would take on the desert island. the most anticipated record by Pulp, months before it was rumored to be called Hard Chord (or so i read in my local music newspaper, probably some journalist getting the info wrong :D), Like a Friend as a teaser on that soundtrack, their cover or All time High (which sound very TIH), the help the aged single... the wait. the LONG WAIT. (although compared to nowadays it wasnt THAT Long hehe)


My tracklisting too follow :D


(Cocaine Socialism sounds like Common People ? Really ?)

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The article I read is on the wiki:
https://pulpwiki.net/Pulp/Press1997
I have just found it whilst browsing through random pages. It says "Hard Cord". Whether it's correct or the writer mis-heard "Hardcore" is anyone's guess.

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 I remember talking about this at the time with one of my mates at school, it was in a magazine (possibly NME or Melody Maker) that the name of the album would either be called This is Hardcore or This is Hard Chord.. Hard Cord would have been another good option though 

Hello all! Long time lurker, first time poster.

I finally decided to register to unburden myself of two thoughts on my favourite album by what has slowly but surely taken its place as my favourite band.

1 - IMHO the perfect version of this album was released in 1998: the North American version. It's exactly the same as the UK release up to and including Glory Days. Then there's the short-outro version of The Day After the Revolution. And then it ends with Like a Friend.

This is the album as I've always known it and to me it's perfect. It's long but doesn't feel bloated, I'm not a fan of the long outro (sounds too close to tinnitus for my taste), and there is no better song to conclude the whole beautiful mess than the majestic Like a Friend (a b-side? A throwaway for a film soundtrack? Insanity!). There are some fine songs that didn't make the cut, and I understand some people's reservations about tracks such as Seductive Barry, but I still wouldn't change a thing. BTW, something similar was done with His N Hers, which on this side of the pond closes with Razzmatazz, and it is perfection.

2 - I was one of the few new fans recruited by this album, and the way that happened might prove the point that it was never going to happen on a large scale. Long story short, I had spent the mid-90s quite well insulated from new music, particularly new British music, and so Pulp and every aspect of their story were 100% new to me when I stumbled upon this album in the summer of 1998.

As someone who heard this record with no expectations and no context, it was a revelation. It didn't blow me away instantly, but I was still inexorably drawn in. I mean, who puts "you're going to like it, but not a lot" within the first minute of their album's opening track, an anthemic dirge about panic attacks and general jadedness? "Pretty soon you'll all be singing along"? Oh, haha, you cheeky bastard! Little did I know this gent was being perfectly serious. Just imagine, if you can, hearing that song and those lines with your head as empty as mine was.

Since I had no knowledge of the backstory and wasn't immediately keen to seek it out, for a good long while I took the album as a well-wrought meditation on manhood, early middle age and their attendant anxieties. It was in some sense a perfect chaser to OK Computer, the one a grand universal statement about modern anxieties, depression and paranoia, and the other an intensely intimate, claustrophobic dissection of same.

And yet it also reaches for the universal in some key places. That might be why Help the Aged wound up becoming my favourite song by my favourite band, even if I know in my head that it isn't their *best* song. Pretty soon, I was indeed singing along. I'm struck by how I initially received and loved this song as an ironic tune about the 35-year-old narrator propositioning a 20-year-old, but 25 years on find it a poignant and sincere song about aging and death. Or maybe it's both, and that's what makes it great? (I have travelled three times to see Pulp and they have not played it. Here's hoping they do should I get to see them this year.)

All of which is to say, I think this album won me over in large part because I had absolutely no knowledge or expectations going in. I was able to approach it as a musical island. Had I known it was all about the band's and especially its frontman's fame-inspired crisis, it would have hit very differently. It might even have been off-putting. And, well, how many people were in a position to approach it with no expectations in 1998?