Pulp – Hits

Funny how it all falls away… Let’s get things straight from the start. Pulp are up there with The Beatles, The Bee Gees and ABBA as the crème de la crème of world pop. Not that you’d ever hear ABBA singing about life oop north and its grimy bedsits, but that’s beside the point.

Jarvis Cocker, that strangely-sexy gangly-geek who drove a Hillman Imp and mooned MJ at the Brits, is a popstar in every sense of the word. He was a Donny Osmond for the disaffected who sang about sex, drugs, angst and old people, all through the voice of a confused teenager (aren’t we all?).

The Pulp story began in a grey and rainy city in Yorkshire, namely Sheffield. Twenty-five miles away in a similarly wet and windy town, and I’m listening to Pulp on a Sunday afternoon. My computer’s broken and I don’t have a TV. Coursework isn’t an option on a lazy day like this, so I lay, rather gormlessly, on my bed and listen to Hits. When I had a car, there was no need for mix tapes and CDs with a collection as good as this. Jarvis is the student union president we all long for, the eccentric best mate we crave, the voice of the weirdos.

We kick-start with ‘Babies’, a tale of unashamed lust and gratification. Kooky keyboards, twiddly guitar, soaring faux-strings and Jarvis singing like he’s reciting from his diary – what more can a pop devotee ask for? With every sniff, sigh and wail, my recognition is cemented. ‘Razzmatazz’ is similarly unabashed (“The trouble with your brother/He’s always sleeping with your mother”) and honest (“Are you staying at home/eating boxes of Milk Tray?”). How does he know?!

‘Lipgloss’ is a sparkly reminder of the importance we place on silly things and the necessity of them going right for us. It’s a story of a girl, dumped because she lost her lipgloss, and the degradation of her physical appearance.

Jarvis is something of a special case – he knows how us ladies are feeling, down to the note. The strawberry bubblegum guitar lick in ‘Do You Remember The First Time?’ is simply delectable and another example of sublime lyrics (“I don’t care if you screw him/just as long as you save a piece for me”).

And then there’s ‘Common People’. We all remember what we were doing when this was released, at the height of Britpop. I was a quirky ten-year-old, having my hair braided with tacky thread and playing pool at the youth club. All the kids loved this song, even though they didn’t understand it. I like to think that I did; I had a Jarvis sticker from Smash Hits on my pencil case.

‘Common People’ has stayed with me my whole teenage life, from looking at boys in ‘the youthy’ to drinking underage pints at a cheesy Britpop night at my local. It still gets regular airing now, as I form ranks with thousands of other horrible students who want to be cool, get drunk and get laid.

‘Underwear’ is my favourite song from Hits at the moment. It’s raunchy, sizzling and undeniably sexy. Jarvis thrusts and sighs with the song’s curves, and let me tell you, it’s enough to win this girl over. I’d definitely marry him if Nicky Wire was absolutely unobtainable. I’d have this song playing on the wedding night, anyway.

‘Sorted For E’s & Wizz’ holds sentiment in my heart as being the first song I ever played in my first car. It was an old Peugeot 309 – what Jarvis would have wanted – and this tune went down a treat with my passengers. That fuzzy haziness you get when waking up after a night’s heavy guzzling is encapsulated in this painkiller of a tune.

If you haven’t realised yet, Pulp is music for occasion and memories – life to soundtrack the music, if you like. ‘Disco 2000′ is possibly the foremost example of a nostalgia-inducing piece, a lament to unrequited childhood love. Jarvis shows yet again that romance is his weakness, and most of us can take something from the “Won’t it be strange when we’re all fully grown?” refrain.

The album takes on a suitably downbeat façade from here on in, beginning with the somewhat cheesy ‘Something Changed’. It’s still sweet and the sentiment is there but you feel it’s a bit over the top on Jarvis’ part. You’re constantly expecting him to slag off her clothes or the way she eats, but he never does.

Not to worry, though, as ‘Help The Aged’ is up next. Jarvis reads the human condition with devilish accuracy – “You can dye your hair but it’s the one thing you can change”. I can’t think of any other bands who have written a song about the difficulties of being a pensioner (and not hurriedly demoted it to b-side status).

‘This Is Hardcore’ is every bit as dirty – nay, pornographic (“I wanna make a movie so let’s star in it together”) – as its little sister ‘Underwear’. This steamy epic is Pulp’s real showpiece, combining dangerous, smouldering strings with a complex episodic structure. Muted trumpets and swirling keys give a fifties feel but Jarvis – suited and booted in my head – brings it bang up to date. It’s a completely different feel to the lacklustre plod of ‘A Little Soul’ – the sorry story of a Dad who’s messed his life up, telling his son not to follow the same path.

‘Party Hard’ is a great dalliance in electro-dance-pop, kind of in the style of Blur’s ‘Girls and Boys’ but with an endearing vocoded vocal in the chorus. I know for a fact that this song regularly features on the playlist of an ultra-cool club in my hometown, and I also know that 95% of the people in there will dance along thinking, “Who the hell is this?”

The final handful of tracks on Hits are, unfortunately, of much less merit than their predecessors. I reckon that’s the downside of single collections – the dwindling last gasps of a band, the worst songs that they love the most – are always included. I’m not too bothered, mind – as soon as I hear the openings of most Pulp songs, I’m itching to go and have a rummage in the charity shop. Hits is a must for those who are even vaguely interested in indie-pop, the style of the nineties or good honest story-telling.

http://www.pulp.co.uk