He arrives not by abseiling from a rocket mid-launch a la Robbie, but rising from the stage disguised as a cardboard cut-out of himself from 1995. In his professorish blazer and spectacles he looks less like a pan-species art alien in the Gaga mould so much as a man with some fascinating things to tell you about a Northumbrian cairn. His arena show budget is blown not on 20,000 light-up wristbands but a retro 1970s leather armchair and some grandfatherly pocket fudge. His demeanour is so supply teacher that even his famously angular dancing could be considered a lesson in advanced geometry. Yet Jarvis Cocker – more than Oasis on their high-profile global cash-in or Blur on their 10-year reunion cycle – hits the O2 stage as a great resurgent star of the age and Britpop’s ultimate comeback king.
“I exist to do this, shouting and pointing,” the Pulp frontman declares as a velvet curtain draws back on banks of players, asserting their revived relevance with recent single “Spike Island”, a sizzling piece of sci-fi Pulp pop (they’re singular enough to warrant their own genre: suave, spiky, seedy, dramatic, as catchy as chlamydia). A computerised voice had opened the show pronouncing “this performance is an encore”, but as Cocker sings “this time I’ll get it right” and later proudly brandishes his trophy for new album More – Pulp’s first in 24 years – hitting Number One today, it feels far more like a rebirth. Or at least, to echo tonight’s programme, a celebratory second set.
The first, playing out beneath a screen variously transforming the stage into a moonlit grotto, a cabaret burlesque emporium and Cocker’s old Sheffield indie club haunt Limit, showcases that record’s mature evolution of Pulp’s timeless aesthetic. At their Nineties peak, they made grandiose, defiant and heroic pop edifices from the everyday gristle of outsiderdom, class struggle, drug paranoia, voyeuristic envy and young lust. Here, besides the imaginary teenage love affair of “Tina” – and even that played at the wrong point in the set due to a self-confessed senior moment on Cocker’s part – they do the same for late-life ruminations (on the vaudevillian “Grown Ups”) and middle-aged love over knobbly aubergines on the swelling, piano-led “Farmer’s Market”, dedicated to Cocker’s wife on their anniversary night. “A high-pressure evening,” he drily confesses.
He remains a dreadful tease. “Would you like to go to a disco?” he asks, before guiding us off Memory Lane into Limit for the jazzy orchestral torch song “Slow Jam”. Like a club night playing out backwards, the melancholy groove of “Sorted for E’s & Wizz” then builds to a psychedelic comedown carnival accompanied by a troupe of blissed-out, whistle-blowing ravers, before “Disco 2000” eventually arrives in a blitz of neon disco colour. Early doors, Pulp are clearly indulging their art pop excesses. “F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.” is a dark industrial psychodrama given electro-convulsive shocks of invigorating anxiety pop. “Help the Aged” a languid lounge song about the charm of the elderly lover which bursts into its chorus like a mid-coital aneurysm. “This is Hardcore” – introduced by Cocker rising from the stage in his leather armchair beneath a digital chandelier, the screens full of cabaret showgirls and the soundtrack full of lascivious horns – is the origin story and motherlode of Indie Sleaze and the grand pastoral “Sunrise” the ultimate in Britprog, right down to Cocker bashing away at a giant drum at the climax and walking into the rising sun like a Twiglet Tommy.
The second set is pure party. After recreating their first reunion rehearsal sessions in a Peak District living room, playing a stripped down “Something Changed” huddled together in front of the curtain, they unleash a closing hour every bit as rousing and hit-heavy as any Wembley stint by their Britpop Big Three peers. Their sly wit shines through as “The Fear”, a fantastically punchy surf noir song about drug-induced paranoia, is drenched in disorientating inverted visuals and becomes a Britpop gig in the Upside Down, but with the demogorgons replaced by monochrome inflatable tube men. “Party Hard”, selected by the crowd via whistle-o-meter from a choice of two songs – “If you vote for it you’d better do it,” Cocker insists, flinging pocket treats at the moshpit, “especially with some fudge in you” – is a Bowie-esque funk pop number expanding on a wide range of classic influences (Scott Walker, The Beatles, T Rex, Roxy Music, Kraftwerk), which places them at the heart of modern art rock. And the night’s liveliest new song “Got to Have Love” is just as inventive, resembling a cowboy shoot-out across Studio 54.
“O.U. (Gone, Gone)” is compulsive krautpop. “Do You Remember the First Time?” could pop cherries at a thousand paces. “Mis-Shapes” sounds as powerful a rallying cry for the loners and outsiders of the online age as it did when it crystalised the Britpop scene in 1995. And scintillating, confetti-strewn runs through “Babies” and “Common People” make for an ecstatic finale, Cocker leaping, writhing, pointing and shouting like he was indeed born to do it. They may feel the need for a warm-down these days, a gentle folk encore of “A Sunset” designed to “send you on your way in a relaxed frame of mind”, but on this showing Pulp are every bit as vital in 2025 as they were three decades ago. Fingers firmly crossed that their new phase is less encore, more reboot.
