When we think of “Britpop” we usually think of Oasis and Blur…and then figure any other names are mere afterthoughts. However, in jolly ole itself, Britpop was a major movement and there were many hot acts. One in fact provided some competition to the big two for a few years, one not quite like the others. If Oasis idolized The Beatles and wanted to sound worldly frat boys and Blur apparently were fonder of The Kinks and The Who and reveled in their assumed working class Britishness, Pulp seemed to draw more upon early Bowie and Roxy Music and exude the persona of aging, dour psych majors. And there may have been no better example of that than their sixth album, This Is Hardcore, which came out this day in 1998.
As Pitchfork put it, “Pulp were something else! They’d formed in 1978, when the wide lapels and polyester (lead singer) Jarvis Cocker took into every student union in Britain weren’t ironic, they were standard issue.” They’d slowly motored along through the ’80s to little notice until suddenly finding their sound come into vogue in the mid-’90s with the album A Different Class. It was witty, danceable and smart… and one of the biggest records of the decade, both judged by sales and critical acclaim, in their homeland. They had a lot on their plate to follow that up. And much like Blur did through the decade, Pulp decided to go off on a bit of a different tangent rather than simply repeat the previous record. In this case, that meant realizing they were not absolute spring chickens anymore, and putting out a darker, denser album, while hanging onto Cocker’s trademark droll delivery and wit. “Just me whining about getting old,” he termed the album.
Given the success of A Different Class, it’s little wonder Island Records wanted them to at least keep some of the same game-plan for this one. Which they did by bringing back super-producer Chris Thomas. With 12 songs and 70 minutes, there was lots of time for introspection and songs that built to something, and that’s what they delivered. Songs like “TV Movie”, “Seductive Barry” (with Thomas playing piano), “A Little Soul” and the rocking but likely ironically-titled “Party Hard” (“why do we have to half kill ourselves just to prove we’re alive?”) one gets an idea of the outlook of This Is Hardcore. But nowhere was it more clear than the first two singles off it – “Help the Aged” and the title track.
“This is Hardcore” is perhaps the song most obviously written about porn since the much lighter ’80s hit “Centerfold.” Cocker says it reveals both his “revulsion and attraction to porn…there’s something gone in their eyes. They’ve done it all and there’s nowhere else to go,” adding in an interview of that time his savvy prediction that the internet would change the world of pornography and make it much bigger. Then there was “Help the Aged”… a song so different that their guitarist quit the band over it! Russell Senior (could their be a better name for this story?) said he hated the song but “Jarvis was very keen on it…I guess we had musical differences.”
Rolling Stone point out that aging wasn’t a wildly popular theme in rock’n’roll songs, and “when the Beatles took on the subject (“When I’m 64”) they did it as a lark. Pulp on the other hand dive right in.” With lines like “Help the aged, one time they were just like you” and “behind those lines on their faces you see where you are headed and it’s such a lonely place” sound like they could bring the peppiest Blur-sponsored Country house party to a screeching halt, and listeners aren’t quite sure to do with the song Billboard expected to be a major rock radio hit. They loved the “deliciously introspective rock ballad…which builds to a collision course of clanging guitars, layered harmonies and pounding beats.”
The album got universally good reviews… although the majority of them were quick to mention it wasn’t as good as A Different Class. Rolling Stone gave it 4-stars, NME, 7 out of 10. Pitchfork later would rank it as the sixth best “Britpop album of all-time”, ahead of ones by Blur and Oasis that came out at roughly the same time…but behind its predecessor, which topped the list. They offered that “the sumptuous art rock of ‘This is It’ and ‘Dishes’ were among Pulp’s best songs.” Allmusic rated it 4.5-stars, noting the band’s varying influences (from Bowie to acid house to new wave) and how “even the catchiest numbers are shrouded in darkness,” making it “not a masterpiece but an artistic triumph.”
British listeners were more receptive to the record’s dark atmosphere or the biting humor of Cocker. In Canada, it got to #32, but in the all-important American market, it failed to chart and has apparently sold fewer than 100 000 copies. But at home in the UK, “Help the Aged” became their fifth-straight top 10 single, hitting #8 and “This is Hardcore” didn’t miss by much, making it to #12. The album itself went to #1 and got them a gold album… far short of the 4X platinum A Different Class had made though.
Pulp brought in a new guitarist and continued on for one more album, but called it quits in 2002, and save for a single brief reunion about a decade back, seem likely to stay in the rock retirement home.