This is the first Pulp album since We Love Life in 2001. Yes: the first Pulp album for 24 years.
How did that happen?
Well: when we started touring again in 2023 we practiced a new song called Hymn of the North during soundchecks & eventually played it at the end of our second night at Hammersmith Odeon. This seemed to open the floodgates: we came up with the rest of the songs on this album during the first half of 2024. A couple are revivals of ideas from last century. The music for one song was written by Richard Hawley. The music for another was written by Jason Buckle. The Eno family sing backing vocals on a song. There are string arrangements written by Richard Jones & played by the Elysian Collective.
The album was recorded over 3 weeks by James Ford in Walthamstow, London, starting on November 18th 2024. This is the shortest amount of time a Pulp album has ever taken to record. It was obviously ready to happen.
These are the facts.
We hope you enjoy the music. It was written & performed by four human beings from the North of England, aided & abetted by five other human beings from various locations in the British Isles. No A.I. was involved during the process.
Woooohooooo ! How the heck did you spot that?! Release date and tracklisting, hurry up! And I hope this means that Hymn has made the cut....
18th of November was also the date Hits came out. I remember cos it was a day after my 18th. And recording on this album started a day after my 40th. Half a lifetime Pulped....
-- Edited by Eamonn on Monday 7th of April 2025 04:22:13 PM
I don't think it's down, the page has been deleted.
Either way, this is great news. If they recorded it in November, then it has been over 4 months so the finished product could very well tie in with the UK dates. Single in the next couple of weeks.
Brian Eno and family on BVs is a little...unexpected isn't it?!
If the Hawley song is "A Sunset", I hope its been given some magic dust in the studio as personally, I find it the weakest of the new songs heard live.
James Ford is the man in demand when it comes to production these days. Probably more versatile (ie with strings and synths) than Mark's choice, Antonoff.
He's done the last albums by Pet Shop Boys, Blur, Arctic Monkeys, Beth Gibbons (Portishead), Fontaine DC and Black Countrtly New Road in the last two or three years alone!
I really admire how so many people involved in such a big project manage to keep it secret despite everyone knowing each other's business online these days.
Oh, and not that I would ever want to correct Jarv, but Hymn of the North actually made its live debut at the end of the second Sheffield Arena gig, not at the Hammersmith Odeon.
James Ford may be the most obvious choice of anyone, but I suspect the band were taking notes seeing Blur getting their shit together quickly over their last album. If Pulp have wrapped the new one up in just three weeks (as they themselves may be astonished to admit, considering how the previous two dragged on) and Ford has anything significant to do with that, then he can't have been too bad a choice.
This line "A couple are revivals of ideas from last century" implies more than just Got To Have Love will feature from the WLL demos.
Imagine if Medieval Owl turns up in the tracklisting! Mark seemed to rate Last Song In The World highly. Or perhaps a full band version of Cuckoo Song?
Ah, this is really exciting! Brilliant!
I'd bloody love to hear a studio full band Cuckoo.
What about My Mistake or Grandfather's Nursery? And hoping Hymn of the North and Got to Have Love are there. Looking forward to hearing studio versions of the new songs! What a year.