- 2025-04-11
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MUSIC
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Pulp Announces New Album “More”, Premieres New Song “Spike Island” on BBC Radio 6
British rock band Pulp, consisting of Jarvis Cocker (vocals/guitar), Candida Doyle (keyboards), Nick Banks (drums), Mark Webber (guitar), Andrew McKinney (bass), Emma Smith (violin/guitar), Adam Betts (percussion) and Richard Jones (viola), is back. The band has announced their upcoming eighth studio album “More” will be released June 6, 2025.
It is their first album in 24 years since the 2021 album “We Love Life”.
The album dedicated to the memory of bassist Steve Mackey, who passed away in 2023. Also, it is the first release under their new label Rough Trade Records.
From the album, the band premiered a new song “Spike Island” on BBC Radio 6 Music with Lauren Laverne.
The song was inspired by the infamous Stone Roses concert at Spike Island, Widnes, in 1990 and was based on a fan's experience of the gig.
The track was written by Adam Betts, Andrew Mckinney, Candida Doyle, Emma Smith, Jarvis Cocker, Jason Buckle, Mark Webber and Nick Banks. Produced by James Ford. The accompanying music video was directed by Jarvis Cocker, who used AI to reanimate the photos from Pulp's Different Class CD booklet.- Jarvis Cocker told Lauren Laverne about the song, “I'd spoken to people who went, so I just kind of picked up the second hand thing of it. 'Sorted for E's and Whizz' was a girl that I was speaking to at The Leadmill in Sheffield one night. And she said all that she could remember were people going round saying, 'Is everyone sorted for E's and whizz?'. So that phrase stuck in my mind for this song. It was Jason Buckle who wrote the music for it, and he was telling me story of being at the concert. And all he could remember was a DJ who between every song said, 'Spike Island come alive, Spike Island come alive'. So that phrase still keep in mind, I've got a very short attention span. I think I just like, that's true.”
The new album comprises a 11-track, which the band recorded at London's Orbb Studio over three weeks of November 2024 with producer James Ford.
Jarvis Cocker said of the album, “I weird at first. Two songs on the record which date from when Steve was around. It was not the nicest thing, but people who you're close to, you never forget them, and you can do things to remember them by. We [recorded] it quite quickly, and we were trying to not think about it too much, because that's what kind of made the last couple of Pulp albums a bit of a pain. It was mainly my fault, because I'd never got the lyrics together, so I was always changing them and messing around. This time, they were all written before we went into the studio, and I realised it was a lot less stressful. You know, I would always be a bit stressed in the studio, because I knew once the music was done, then I had to write the words. I don't know why I put myself through that.” -
Jarvis Cocker shared about the album on social media, “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 Sheffield Arena. 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.”
He continued, “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 AI was involved during the process.”
He added, “This album is dedicated to Steve Mackey. This is the best that we can do. Thanks for listening.”
Jarvis Cocker said of the video, “I was told that someone was interested in investigating AI & did I have any ideas? The first idea I had was to animate the photographs that Rankin & Donald took for Different Class: after all, back in 1995 they had been an 'artificial' way of dropping us into real-life situations & getting an album cover done whilst we were too busy recording the music for that album to pose for pictures. No brainer.
It was my initial idea to produce a kind of “making of” video that showed how the photos had come to be taken — but as soon as I fed the first shot into the AI app I realised that wasn't going to happen. So I decided to “go with the flow” & see where the computer led me. All the moving images featured in the video are the result of me feeding in a still image & then typing in a “prompt” such as: “The black & white figure remains still whilst the bus in the background drives off” which led to the sequence where the coach weirdly slides towards the cut-out of me.
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.... I have to thank Julian House for some expert post-production work & Rankin & Donald Milne for allowing me to use their work in this way. As it says in text at the end of the video, I think what they did for Pulp back in 1995 was “Human Intelligence at its best.”
Photo by Tom Jackson - source : BBC Radio 6
