I'd rather hear the Pulp song, "Darren" but fair fucks to Blur. They don't seem to have issues with quickly coming together, jamming and getting songs to materialise fairly fast as The Magic Whip was also made during rehearsals for touring.

Having said that, you do risk it being half-baked and it's certainly not one of their stronger works.

I'm more impressed that they kept it quiet, pretty difficult to do these days.

Jarvis/Pulp aren't generally in the "constant flow" inhibited by Coxon and Albarn. That's just the way it is, that's just the way it is...#trimmtrabb

Eamonn wrote:

---

I'd rather hear the Pulp song, "Darren" but fair fucks to Blur. They don't seem to have issues with quickly coming together, jamming and getting songs to materialise fairly fast as The Magic Whip was also made during rehearsals for touring.
[...]
Jarvis/Pulp aren't generally in the "constant flow" inhibited by Coxon and Albarn. That's just the way it is, that's just the way it is...#trimmtrabb

---

Albarn's music has had a familiar thematic feel for a long time now, probably since Plastic Beach. There's a lot of emotional reflection, earnest introspection, songs of regret and sadness, relationships, disconnection from a digital world, imagery of islands and other worlds and dreamlike, liminal settings. It's one of the two modes he occupies, the other being the more political, bratty and worked-up side (Blur's 'Life' trilogy, Demon Days, TGTB&TQ). Given the names of this album's tracks (as well as the one released so far), I expect more of the same.

His worn-out, melancholy lyrics are the sort of thing that goes hand-in-hand with bands from bygone glory days getting back together again. I don't think that outlook, or that approach, is really Jarvis's style; even the most downbeat corners of Pulp's discography have a wisecrack in them ('Help the Aged' has its glue-sniffing wrinklies, for instance, or the namedrop of Music From A Bachelor's Den in 'The Fear'), they get dirtier and realer but there's always something to spark up the crowd too... I think Pulp are more content just to let their past music speak for themselves, they've already lyrically travelled to such extremes and built up a proper lasting statement as a group, too.

After all, the tagline for this year's reunion is 'this is what we do for an encore'. It doesn't make it seem like there's a second act on the way.

 

Eamonn wrote:

---

Very well-put and fully agreed!

---

 Cheers!

The cover art of the new Blur album is interesting.

Picture of bright blue outdoor swimming pool and swimmer within = calls back to The Great Escape album cover

Swimmer also reminiscent of Leisure album cover.

Grey overcast sky and red logo = colours indicative of Think Tank album cover.

The picture is of Gourock outdoor lido - you can see the Cowal peninsula behind in the mist, including its main town, Dunoon. Blur actually performed live in Dunoon around the time of The Great Escape, when they toured seaside towns.

ArrGee wrote:

---

Eamonn wrote:

---

I'd rather hear the Pulp song, "Darren" but fair fucks to Blur. They don't seem to have issues with quickly coming together, jamming and getting songs to materialise fairly fast as The Magic Whip was also made during rehearsals for touring.

---

Interestingly that was the premise of Jarv is  forming the songs as they went.

The "new" Pulp LP I would envisage would be something created from the unreleased material pre-2002 a la After You.  I think there was a second song recorded for Hits and there is all the We Love Life I suspect there is an album or two in that. And it would be interesting if they did release "Darren"

---

The fact that 'Cuckoo' was released recently suggests that Jarvis may have been revisiting this era of Pulp. I mean, otherwise, these are the songs we know of:

Roald Dahl
The Quiet Revolution
Grandfather's Nursery
My Mistake/Chordy
Barry Crusoe/My Body May Die
Medieval Owl
Fire Island
My Chopper
Duck Diving
Cockroach Conversation
Six String
Dream Galaxy
Love You Baby
Darren
M'Lady
Performance Of A Lifetime
The Last Song in the World
St Just
Got To Have Love

Wonder if any of those have particular single potential. We already had After You, after all.

I would love to hear the After You-treatment of some of the songs left on the WLL cutting-room floor.

I dont know quite what it is, because the songs are fine and plenty of people are really digging them, but Blur and Suedes new music just doesnt work for me. I guess those bands have a very specific meaning to me beyond music, and though they are ostensibly working bands, I kinda see them as undead, like echoes of a future that might have been.

Pulp, on the other hand, seem to accept and embrace this rather than resist. They respect what Pulp means and that a part of that was fuelled by conditions that are no longer there. Something to be celebrated with joy, rather than to possess (in the Exorcist sense). Perhaps there comes a point when the bands no longer belong to themselves in the fullest sense but they are their own caretakers

-- Edited by superchob on Friday 19th of May 2023 07:49:20 PM

It's great to hear that they are releasing a new album. Not sure who Darren is. Anyone?

I agree, Pulp probably won't release another album but I'd accept a "We Love Life" deluxe as their final album.

In respect of the songs above, it's worth noting:
Fire Island and My Chopper weren't strictly Pulp songs, they were performed by A Touch of Glass. That said, they could have been prototypes for later Pulp songs that were never released.
Love You Baby / Six String / Medieval Owl / Dream Galaxy - were only recorded as instrumentals but, again, could have found their way into other songs.
Cockroach Conversation was performed by Jarvis at the Meltdown Festival and was apparently an early attempt at using the "Otley" sample that eventually found its way into "The Trees".

I'm not sure of the status of the second song that was recorded for "Hits". I vaguely remember Alex saying that it was fully recorded but they decided not to release it but the Wiki says it was left unfinished.

As for "Darren", I'm taking a wild stab in the dark here but it may have eventually been recycled by Relaxed Muscle. Jarvis came up with the "Darren Spooner" character when doing the "Mis-Shapes" video so he certainly had the idea before this was recorded in 1999. It's just a hunch, but you never know.

What the fuck is he doing with his voice? Even in the 90s he wasn't this mockneyfied. And it sounds terrible. It's like he lost all his teeth. Steptoe through a vocoder.

Also, not only is Graham allegedly a sex offender but he's also offensive at the guitar here. It sounds like they're just trying to be gnarly/scuzzy by playing horribly out of tune random chords. Like a phoned-in Swamp Song. It's really sub-par. The production also sounds iffy, can't hear any bass. Pretty dire IMHO.

-- Edited by lipglossed on Friday 30th of June 2023 03:04:16 PM

So what do you think of the album?

At 36 minutes, it is their shortest album to date. To me, it feels like they have gone from one extreme to the other - 15 track albums padded out with fillers and useless instrumentals to a 10 track album where the longest song is 4:17. I think that this would have been a better album if they had found some middle ground and made some of the songs longer whilst leaving out the fillers/padding. "The Heights" is a prime example of this, it starts off quite slow and starts to become rockier ("Trimm Trabb" if you will) but ends quite abruptly. Still, there are some great tracks on the album and my current favourite is "Avalon" which sounds nothing like the Roxy Music song by the way.

lipglossed wrote:

---

What the fuck is he doing with his voice? Even in the 90s he wasn't this mockneyfied. And it sounds terrible. It's like he lost all his teeth. Steptoe through a vocoder.

Also, not only is Graham allegedly a sex offender but he's also offensive at the guitar here. It sounds like they're just trying to be gnarly/scuzzy by playing horribly out of tune random chords. Like a phoned-in Swamp Song. It's really sub-par. The production also sounds iffy, can't hear any bass. Pretty dire IMHO.

-- Edited by lipglossed on Friday 30th of June 2023 03:04:16 PM

---

 With that Graham stuff, didnt the people who make the allegations actually say they did it for attention and nothing had actual substance to it?

New album is nice from them at this stage of their career, plus the constant uncertainty every time they've reformed about new material, and the tales behind how the new music nearly didn't happen.

It's a decent record, pretty cohesive. Not all the tracks land but those that do really do, and the instrumentalism is lush.

Seems like blur are done again. I didn't even get around to listening to the new LP

www.nme.com/news/music/damon-albarn-says-its-time-to-wrap-up-blur-again-its-too-much-for-me-3553922

Damon Albarn has shared that Blur will be going on a hiatus until further notice with the frontman saying Its too much for me.

andy wrote:

---

ArrGee wrote:

---

Seems like blur are done again. I didn't even get around to listening to the new LP

www.nme.com/news/music/damon-albarn-says-its-time-to-wrap-up-blur-again-its-too-much-for-me-3553922

Damon Albarn has shared that Blur will be going on a hiatus until further notice with the frontman saying Its too much for me.

---

 

Done until he has 3 minutes to spare, then they will make an album and tour again. 

---

We will probably get another Gorillaz album in between