Last night Pulp, the masters of turning the miniature into anthems that shake the rafters of even open-air concert spaces, played their second of two shows in New York City, their first gigs in our city since 1998, when the band played the Hammerstein Ballroom. Their potent blend of creamy synthpop hooks and Cocker’s wry commentary on romance, class, and sex was, as I pretty much expected, absolutely thrilling even though their last album, We Love Life, is 11-plus years old; the vitality present in even the band’s less anthemic songs, like the hangover squint “Sunrise,” coursed throughout the room. Leading the way was Cocker, who I last saw with a green-painted face belting out bare-bones, self-lacerating sex jams. Last night he was in louche-professor mode, posing foppishly on the big beats, swinging his hips just so, drawling out the wistful lyrics of anthems about chances not taken, fizzled relationships, and muddling through the physical and emotional aftermath of drawn-out nights, and—most importantly—doling out aphorisms between songs as if they were delicious, decadent truffles. He didn’t quote the Wikipedia entry about New York the way he paid tribute to Chicago when I saw him solo at the 2008 Pitchfork Music Festival, but he was still full of pearls of wisdom and notable factoids I wrote a lot of them down, mostly because I was too busy dancing like a fool during the actual songs to take proper notes; here are the seven best.
Happy Week That Sound Of The City Became A Jarvis Cocker/Lil B Blog
