Pulp: 2025

This  FUV Live session is also available as a podcast, "FUV Live Sessions." We're elevating WFUV's long history of live sessions and interviews via a podcast that you can find on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Podcasts. New episodes drop every Monday.

Although Pulp has been touring on and off since 2011, making multiple trips to New York City over the years, the June release of the band's eighth studio album, More — the group's first in 24 years — was a delightful surprise (although fans always had faith that another record would come along after 2001's We Love Life).

Shortlisted for this year's Mercury Prize (Pulp won 30 years ago for Different Class), the band debuted a few of More's songs, including "Spike Island" and "Got to Have Love" at the Glastonbury in late June on the Pyramid Stage, swanning into the lineup as a mystery band mischievously dubbed "Patchwork." It was a neat bookend to their headlining gig at the same festival three decades earlier, when the Sheffield band just released "Common People" weeks earlier and were a last-minute replacement after the Stone Roses had to cancel.

Core Pulp members Jarvis Cocker, Candida Doyle, Nick Banks and Mark Webber chose to step back into the studio to record More nearly two years after the passing of Steve Mackey, to whom More is dedicated.

Yes, sorrow is part of the passage of time in the life of a 47-year-old band, but there's plenty of joy too: at the heart of More is Cocker's new marriage, romance, and, as always, the lusty politics of sex, delivered with dry Northern wit and eloquence.

I caught up with Jarvis on Zoom when we were both in London, but on opposite sides of the city. We spoke about Pulp's work with producer James Ford (Fontaines D.C., Black Country, New Road, The Last Dinner Party) and the speedy three weeks of More's recording, plus that triumphant 2025 return to Worthy Farm. He touched on  "The Hymn of the North" — the song (co-written with Chilly Gonzales) that kicked off the balance of More — and how the audience helps him out these days with 1998's "Help the Aged."

Cocker mused on the continued importance of public service broadcasting — recalling his own show, "Sunday Service" on BBC Radio 6 Music from 2010-2017 — and why noncommercial radio is essential to bands like Pulp.

For this FUV Live session, the full touring band of Pulp —Cocker (vocals), Doyle (Farfisa organ/keys), Webber (guitar), Banks drums),  Jason Buckle (electronics), Emma Smith (violin and backing vocals), Andrew McKinney (bass), Adam Betts (snare, percussion) and Richard Jones (viola, keys) — delivered three More songs live, recorded in London at The Premises during a rehearsal: "Tina," "Grownups" and "Slow Jam."

[Interview recorded on 8/21/25; Songs recorded at The Premises by Tom Wright and mixed by Neil Heal. Produced by Meghan Suma.]