Pulp announce their first album in 24 years: ‘We hope you enjoy the music’

Pulp have announced the forthcoming release of their first album in almost 24 years, and shared the lead single “Spike Island”.

Frontman Jarvis Cocker said that ideas for the new record, titled More, began back in 2023, when the band embarked on a reunion tour of a number of arenas around the UK.

He explained that they started with a new song, “Hymn of the North”, during soundchecks before debuting it live at the end of their second night at Sheffield Arena.

“This seemed to open the floodgates,” he said, “[and] we came up with the rest of the songs on this album during the first half of 2024.

“A couple are revivals of ideas from the last century. The music for one song was written by Richard Hawley. The music for another was written by Jason Buckle. The Eno family sing backing vocals on a song. There are string arrangements written by Richard Jones and played by the Elysian Collective.”

Meanwhile, the idea for “Spike Island” apparently came from co-writer Jason Buckle, who attended the Stone Roses’ infamous Spike Island gig and was irked by a DJ who kept shouting, “Spike Island, come alive!”

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More was recorded over a period of three weeks by James Ford [Arctic Monkeys, Fontaines DC] at Orbb Studio in Walthamstow, London, starting on 18 November 2024.

“This is the shortest amount of time a Pulp album has ever taken to record,” Cocker said. “It was obviously ready to happen.

A new press shot of the group shows that they are now a nine-piece, featuring Cocker, guitarist Mark Webber, keys player Candida Doyle and drummer Nick Banks alongside newer touring members.

Cocker used the announcement to take a swipe at the looming threat of artificial intelligence (AI) for British musicians, who have been fighting against government proposals to let AI companies use copyright-protected work without the artist’s permission.

“We hope you enjoy the music,” he said. “It was written and performed by four human beings from the North of England, aided and abetted by five other human beings from various locations in the British Isles. No AI was involved during the process.”

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The accompanying music video for “Spike Island” did, however, use AI in order to animate images made of the band for their 1995 Britpop classic Different Class.

Cocker said that “all the moving images featured in the video are the result of me feeding in a still image and then typing in a prompt”.

“The weekend I began work on the video was a strange time,” he said. “I went out of the house and kept expecting weird transformations of the surrounding environment due to the images the computer had been generating. The experience had marked me. I don’t know whether I’ve recovered yet…”

More is dedicated to Steve Mackey, Pulp’s bassist who died aged 56 in March 2023.

The album’s full tracklist is as follows:

1. “Spike Island”

2. “Tina”

3. “Grown Ups”

4. “Slow Jam”

5. “Farmers Market”

6. “My Sex”

7. “Got To Have Love”

8. “Background Noise”

9. “Partial Eclipse”

10. “The Hymn of the North”

11. “A Sunset”

Pulp will support the album with a UK and Ireland arena tour taking place from 7 June, kicking off at the OVO Hydro arena in Glasgow before heading to Dublin, London, Birmingham and Manchester, before concluding in their hometown of Sheffield at Tramlines Festival on 25 July.