ARTS

Pulp gets kinky and reflective

by Michelle Chang

Pulp
This Is Hardcore
Island Records

If you know Pulp, you know that they're a pretty saucy bunch. It was not so long ago that their last album, A Different Class, came out with the energy, attitude and ethic of a working class revolution on speed. Alas, we must all come down from a high.

Pulp's latest offering, This is Hardcore, reveals that Pulp has apparently done a lot of growing in a short amount of time. In many ways, it is the same Pulp we know and love; catchy pop jams with a subversive and unapologetic tone. Only this time around, the feeling is more stark and depressed. It's like the day after the big party, when you look back on the night's events with nostalgia, realize the dull and melancholy state of the present and look to the future with a sense of impending doom.

The first track is called "The Fear," and it speaks to a lot of the sentiments on this album. Jarvis Cocker laments about getting old, become stale and being alone. The fear is of watching bachelorhood make the transformation from being chic and wild to being pathetic. Picture of Pulp

Pulp is very fond of those bold, chaotic and sexfilled post teenage years when you're allowed to be loud, crude, carefree, deviant and independent. But this album finds that period coming to a sad close. In "Help the Aged," Cocker reflects on the sad state of old age that his generation is soon heading for and thus should keep in mind. The song brings out a sad self-consciousness that inevitably comes with getting older.

As far as sexuality goes, this album has the same shameless and honest quality about it, however the mood evoked is quite different. A Different Class was flirtatious and slightly naughty. This is Hardcore is rather kinky and dark.

The track by the same title is the album's most intriguing and enticing song. The background is flushed with sultry brass, moody piano and evocative strings. The song lures us into what feels like the album's red light district, full of smokey hotel rooms and a gritty, sexual heat.

The verses are slow, and almost a little painful. The feeling captured is one of sex detached and used; there's no romance here on these sad streets. And yet it is also an underworld, a place with its own drama and seduction. Our dirty desires are let loose, and that makes that song a bizarre turn-on.

"Seductive Barry" carries on in a similar vein. The song is eight and a half minutes of a low, droning chorus and Cocker engaging in a frank and intimate sexual confession. He mingles the ideas of sex, fantasy, love and dream fulfillment, confusing the boundaries between them.

Musically, the album is nothing innovative and is resonant of their usual style. Except that the degree of spirit and energy is somewhat depleted, making for a more mellow and low key album overall. A couple of the tracks are actually mediocre and even boring, such as the dreadful "A Little Soul."

However, the banality of some parts of this album all seems to be a part of its attitude. Many of the songs seem to celebrate merely being alive, even if the current age is really sort of uninspired and ridiculous. There are no illusions of the great hope anymore. The party is coming to an end and the time has come to begin accepting this. But there's no use in getting all worked up over it. Pulp always relieves its sullen side with an appreciation for the glory of simple ideas. We can still resist the idiocy and boredom that looms over us by carrying the same torches we did we when we were younger: love, sex and friends.

In the last track, "The Day After the Revolution," a tribute of sorts is given to what has passed as Pulp makes the passage with everyone else into the 21st century. We're leaving something sweet behind, a lovable chaos, an insatiable vitality. But the good news is that we survived and will always take something from that time. As the album's mantra reads, "It's O.K. to grow up - just as long as you don't grow old. Face it...you are young."

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Copyright © 1998, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 126, Number 19, April 3, 1998

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