Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

All the talk ever seemed to be about Oasis and Pulp, in the expansive field of discussion thirty years ago at the height of what was termed ‘Brit Pop’ other bands seemed to be the surrounding part players, never really able to break through the aura filled bubble of the Manchester and London feud; and yet despite it all for a huge swathe of music appreciators there was only ever one band that caught the zeitgeist so perfectly, and one that didn’t require hype, because the band weren’t driven by that, there were pushed by the realism of life and their album Different Class emphasised that emotional gravitas in one resonating gesture in 1995.

Pulp returned to the overwhelming public conscious thirty years on with, not a bang, but an explosion of starlight that caught the same beautiful vibe and expression but with a heart that was More, a pulse that was sensual and galloping, that framed exactly how the band were to be looked at thirty years on from their finest moment, and it was equalled with polish and exuberant humility.

The passion of the first gigs after that release is also frame with cool and style, of typical Yorkshire stoic mindfulness to the audience and in Live!, recorded one week after the studio album was released and in front of a packed London 02 Arena, the challenge of wit and sophistication was laid down in evidence to prove to the world that the band didn’t end at the start of the new century, it regrouped, took its time to re-energise, and then show its fierce groove to be even more substantial, more driven than the time between could have imagined.

The pull of the noise, the soundtrack for many of the 1990s mixed between new songs and old favourites is enormous, the crown hanging on every vocal, fully defending the intricate nature of the performance and the delicate drama of the instrument, this is what a live album is meant to represent, and Pulp do it with sheer volume and creativity.

Across tracks such as Spike Island, Disco 2000, This Is Hardcore, Something’s Changed, Mis-Shapes, Sorted For E’s & Wizz, Do You Remember The First Time, Babies, and the phenomenal Common People, Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, Candida Doyle, Nick Banks, and Mark Webber, alongside a fantastic array of musicianship from people such as Emma Smith, Richard Jones, and Laura Moody, what comes over is a mountain of cool, a pleasure of the sense and curated with a wealth of vision that knowing a live album is more than just adding to the sales column, it is setting the scene of being alive in the present moment for all time.

A truly tremendous capturing of the band in a way that just beats all. Live! Is an expression of acknowledging a groove that was always triumphant.

Ian D. Hall