Eamonn wrote:

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Edit: This word-filter is getting out of hand. I understand c0Ck being asterisked but s.hite? C'mon, we're all "Grown-Ups" here...

-- Edited by Eamonn on Monday 2nd of June 2025 03:48:34 PM

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And while we're at it, is there any way of adding support for em-dashes, please? I'm constantly using em-dashes and then they don't show up in my posts, so I have to go back and edit them to add hyphens instead otherwise they're unreadable. I love a good em-dash.

lipglossed wrote:

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Eamonn wrote:

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Edit: This word-filter is getting out of hand. I understand c0Ck being asterisked but s.hite? C'mon, we're all "Grown-Ups" here...

-- Edited by Eamonn on Monday 2nd of June 2025 03:48:34 PM

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And while we're at it, is there any way of adding support for em-dashes, please? I'm constantly using em-dashes and then they don't show up in my posts, so I have to go back and edit them to add hyphens instead otherwise they're unreadable. I love a good em-dash.

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The ****ing profanity filter cannot be disabled for free forums. 

If you read the forum guidelines post at the top, Steve has used the word "arse" several times and this isn't censored. Odd!

I just had to google what em-dashes are and can't see any options to add them specifically. Maybe the settings for your keyboard would allow it?

Ian wrote:

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lipglossed wrote:

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Eamonn wrote:

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Edit: This word-filter is getting out of hand. I understand c0Ck being asterisked but s.hite? C'mon, we're all "Grown-Ups" here...

-- Edited by Eamonn on Monday 2nd of June 2025 03:48:34 PM

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And while we're at it, is there any way of adding support for em-dashes, please? I'm constantly using em-dashes and then they don't show up in my posts, so I have to go back and edit them to add hyphens instead otherwise they're unreadable. I love a good em-dash.

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The ****ing profanity filter cannot be disabled for free forums. 

If you read the forum guidelines post at the top, Steve has used the word "arse" several times and this isn't censored. Odd!

I just had to google what em-dashes are and can't see any options to add them specifically. Maybe the settings for your keyboard would allow it?

-- Edited by Ian on Monday 2nd of June 2025 05:56:49 PM

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That's because it's a Canadian Company, Arse means nothing there. How about ass, let's see, or ASS.

Edit: that works too 

-- Edited by andy on Monday 2nd of June 2025 06:24:39 PM

OK. Anyway...more More reviews. They keep comin'...


Rolling Stone:
https://www.rollingstone.co.uk/music/album-reviews/pulp-more-review-a-triumphant-comeback-from-britpop-titans-50632/

Weakest review to date, here...what a lyric from My Sex if true! (to rival "a Teddy bear with an erection" on Leftovers before he decided to replace it...):

https://www.slantmagazine.com/music/pulp-more-album-review/

Ironically, calling him "Jarvis ****er" actually makes his name seem ruder, if anything.

Some harsh reviews here, hope that wont make them question future records 

Ah, look at what that review says about HOTN and pay no heed. It's not a bit overcooked and I don't agree that it leaves you wondering whether the North is a place to leave or return to. Part of what I love is how affectionate it sounds towards the North. The song reminds me of Russell saying he felt this great pride that he came from somewhere so unremittingly ugly (his words, folks, not mine!). I have never been to the North of England so I can't say! But I do know you can love a place despite all of the hardships it might have foisted upon you and all of the prejudice you may face because you're from that place. Everyone's entitled to an opinion so I'm entitled to say I think that's a load of rubbish, that review. I keep saying it, I think that's my favourite ever pulp song now. So warm, so soulful.

I've just realised that the listening party I went to played the second side first! I'm now forever going to expect My Sex to be the first song!!! To be honest I think I prefer the listening order I heard it in. Second side is stronger in my opinion or at least on first listen.

The NY article you posted, Eamonn was great, thank you. Found that amazing about the man who gave him the guitar when he was a child. So glad he tracked him down and had those moments. Like it was meant to be.

-- Edited by Jean on Tuesday 3rd of June 2025 07:21:57 PM

Eamonn wrote:

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What did Les Inrocks say?

 

 

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They probably love it. Jarvis and Neil Hannon can do no wrong with them ! 

The Wall Street Journal know their stuff better than the Financial Times:

More by Pulp Review: Satire and Sincerity
The Britpop bands first studio album in 24 years offers a hopeless yet humorous perspective on life today.
By Mark Richardson
June 3, 2025 4:50 pm ET
Pulp

In the 1990s, the U.K. was in thrall to Britpop, the retro-leaning movement that was a more melodic answer to the grunge that had taken hold in the U.S. Among the biggest bands of the scene, Oasis had anthems, Blur had taste and Pulp had style. That last, Sheffield-based band, led by singer Jarvis ****er, was initially an outlier because its first two albums came out in the 80s and werent representative of what came later. But by 1994s His n Hers, Pulp had mastered its own brand of multifaceted guitar pop, which mixed glam rock, disco and punk. Mr. ****er, whose persona was a magnetic fusion of Bryan Ferrys louche sexiness and Elvis Costellos wit, became one of rocks great frontmen. And then, after Pulps 2001 album We Love Life, produced by avant-pop legend Scott Walker, the group went its separate ways.

The bands membership had always been fluid, though drummer Nick Banks and keyboardist Candida Doyle were there from nearly the beginning, and it was fair to assume after it split that Mr. ****er would pick up where the band left off. But he had tired of Pulps celebrity and pursued low-key solo projects. In what has become an increasingly common progression for once-disbanded groups, a series of reunion tours led to studio sessions and now, after 24 years, we have a new Pulp record.

The stunningly strong More (Rough Trade), out Friday, is a celebration of everything that made it great in the first place.
The opening Spike Island is both heavy and slinky, marrying a quasi-disco beat to a palpitating bassline thats at once sensual and menacing. Mr. ****er, a bundle of jittery energy, spits out his lines as if hes walking briskly on the street next to you and trying to finish his story before heading down into the tube. Hes an exceptionally good lyricist with an uncanny ability to mix satire and sincerity, and here he jokes about the absurdity of making a life in music while nodding to his bands history and extended absence: Not a shaman or a showman / Ashamed I was selling the rights / I took a breather / And decided not to ruin my life.

During his mellower solo years, Mr. ****er has acquired some wisdom but has lost none of his mischievousness. Much of More is about looking for love and breaking up, though nothing is ever simple. On the second track, Tina, his narrator thinks hes found the perfect relationship, but hes never met his obsession and she doesnt know he exists: An outside observer would call him a deranged stalker. Mr. ****er has an eye for telling imageshere he imagines making love in a charity shops storage room, The smell of digestive biscuits in the air.
The singer delivers that amusing and pathetic track over a grand orchestral production with strings and a choir, which lends pathos to his wry observations, and the lush production throughout by James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Blur) adds drama.

Grown Ups is a pulsing rock number that ticks like a time bomb and then explodes. Slow Jam, which finds Mr. ****er conversing with Jesus and learning that hes tired of hearing about the ills of the world, is built around a funky and hypnotic bassline that captures the R&B atmosphere suggested by its title. The Hymn of the North, a stirring and stately ballad about the impossibility of enduring happiness, has a Wagnerian grandeur. And My Sex, in which Mr. ****er pokes fun at his own Lothario image, is a sleazy midtempo rock number with sustained guitars and Gregorian chant-style backing vocals.

As strong as the music isthese songs are as catchy and memorable as those from Pulps mid-90s peakMr. ****ers lyrics stay with you even more. On Background Noise, a searing psychedelic ballad with a knockout chorus, he sings of the difficulty of appreciating love in the moment, concluding that Like the buzzing of a fridge / You only notice when it disappears. And on the closing A Sunset, he sees a world where the tenderest human emotion is merely fodder for advertising, interpolating a famous soft-drink jingleone person sees a beautiful sunset, another is thinking of how to profit from it.

The singer is consumed with anger and disgusted by the world, its superficiality and the way the powerful rule over the powerless, and yet his observations are delivered with warmth and he knows that the best way to cope is to have a good laugh. That after all this time he and his band are able to render these feelings so clearly in indelible pop songs is inspiring.

Mr. Richardson is the Journals rock and pop music critic. Follow him on X @MarkRichardson.
Copyright ©2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the June 4, 2025, print edition as 'Pulp Returns, Mixing Satire and Sincerity'.