Pulp - London Brixton Academy - 30/11/01
5/5
By: Toby L
Set-List: 'Weeds', 'The Night Minnie Trimperly Died', 'Birds In Your Garden', 'Something Changed', 'Joyriders', 'Live Bed Show', 'FEELING CALLED LOVE', 'Bad Cover Version', 'The Trees', 'I Love Life', 'This Is Hardcore', 'Sunrise', ENCORE #1, 'Sorted For E's & Wizz', 'Babies', 'Underwear', ENCORE #2, 'Laughing Boy', 'Common People'.
Seeing Pulp live in the past has always been a liberating experience: more than just a mere concert. But, how does latter-day Pulp compare with the band we once knew back in the mid-90's, a group that actually played the same venue in '95 to a rapturous reception?
Playing the third and last night of a residency in the Brixton Academy, a large, grand and popular London venue, from the outset, it's clear that this band's appearance tonight is highly anticipated. However, there's been a hitch along the way: a bomb-scare was alerted this evening in Victoria Station - a major area from where many fans will have travelled - resulting in some onlookers turning up late to the venue. As if the waiting for tonight's show - sold out for weeks by now - wasn't enough, having to hold on for an extra forty minutes for Sheffield's heroes to turn up onstage was just a further annoyance.
Yet, the sudden dimming of the house-lights prompts a deafening cheer and nothing else matters anymore. The band walk on casually, joined by two members of the prior support band - The Fat Truckers - with the leader and indisputable live star, Sir Jarvis Cocker, running on last, enabling an audience-roar more considerable in volume than a million Charlotte Church's getting attacked by cattle-prods. The train-like rhythm of opener 'Weeds' and bellowing chorus ensures an epic and spine-tingling introduction to an evening that would... sustain such a powerful impact.
The way that the set-list is chosen means clumps of new material and older songs are placed in alternating parts of the concert. It begins with some of the more poppier aspects of their current LP, 'We Love Life', and follows on with gems such as 'Something Changed' and a tamed 'Joyriders', whose once pogo-frantic effect was replaced with a more acoustic and fuller sounding version, clearly supplemented by live-guitarist, Richard Hawley, also a fine solo-artist in his own right.
What underpins a lot of the success of the show, however, is Jarvis' ever-peculiar banter between songs and - yes - those dance-moves. On the agenda this evening, in regards to speech, there's the current conflict-situation, an insight into how speaking to your plants makes them grow better, plus several endeavours to shut up the rather talkative audience.
Still, for those that bothered listening to the music rather than their own voices, a treat was to be held: from the percussive dance-rock of 'FEELING CALLED LOVE' and slickly executed extended run-through of 'Live Bed Show' - both from their breakthrough album, 'Different Class' - right to the modern day releases, namely the swooping 'Bad Cover Version' and 'The Trees' - the first set was proof that the northern British act could rise past expectations, delivering a collection of songs both crowd-pleasing and artistically-challenging. However, the culmination of the first seventy minutes in the magnificent 'Sunrise' proves that, when Pulp want to, they can go beyond perfection, and venture on to a kind of energy and soul that signifies a song-writing skill which is virtually impossible to come by. It ends in a blaze of yellow lights, howling guitars and an audience astounded by what they've just witnessed...
... Prior to them returning and launching into the greatest hits - 'Sorted...', 'Babies' and album-track gem 'Underwear'. Predictably, the delivery and response is overwhelming. BUT, that ain't it. They then return to air a 1997 b-side track, the country-tinged 'Laughing Boy', which most would happily wrap things up with. But Pulp aren't like 'most' out there; instead, knowing that this is the last night of their UK tour and should thus make it extra special, a violently euphoric 'Common People' is unleashed, their first rendition for a while, complete with a krautrock reworking.
This may all come across as rather overblown and hugely praising, but I dare you to view them live and then write your resulting impression. If you're unable to appreciate Pulp's genius, then you're clearly not able to respect an ever-changing, influential act that - as time goes by - actually improve. Just imagine if only more musicians sounded so sweet.
Artists in this article: Pulp
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