By Neil Durham

WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2

Tracklist: Spike Island; Slow Jam; Sorted For Es And Whizz; Disco 2000; Help The Aged; Farmers’ Market; This Is Hardcore; Sunrise; Something’s Changed; Grown Ups; O.U.; Do You Remember The First Time?; Mis-Shapes; Got To Have Love; Babies; Common People; A Sunset

Actress Kelly Macdonald, arguably best known for 1996’s iconic Trainspotting, welcomes this encore performance and bids the audience farewell with a charming: ‘Goodnight and safe travels – and remember, take care of each other.’

• Read on for reasons including how this is the story of pop’s greatest resurrection of recent years

It’s a small detail but a reminder of how perfectly Pulp have played their comeback. Gene who played their 1st gig since 2004 in 2025 at the Eventim Apollo and released it as a live album earlier this year would do well to take notice.

No Oasis-type, resting on your laurels and offering fans nothing new at stadium gigs here then.

Pulp topped the charts with More in 2025 and we said of it: ‘Here we are listening to More, the band’s 1st new album in 24 years, a week before they play 2 headline gigs at London’s The 02.

‘And the good news is that, while this is no Different Class, there’s plenty here that deserves its place in those sets at The 02 next week and perhaps even a surprise return to Glastonbury Festival before the month is over.’

More topped the album chart the night we saw them at The 02 – a dizzying time to be a longtime fan of the band and the gig this live recording is drawn from – and we wrote: ‘Lead singer Jarvis Cocker is a loquacious frontman who knows how to tell a good story yet is self-deprecating even on a night when the audience at least is celebrating a sense of triumph unusually associated with outsider anthems such as these.

‘The beauty of new album More is that it brings a sense of the worldy wise to the lyrics with tunes like Grown Ups, Spike Island and, especially, current single Got To Have Love in no way out of place tonight in what is essentially a greatest hits and treats set.’

Cocker speaks on the album of the importance of love and the irrelevance of material things.

Live! is a set which includes unexpected gems from the nooks and crannies of a career which includes thoughts on the descent to hell (This Is Hardcore), empathy for the elderly (Help The Aged) and a fondness for darkness (Sunrise).

All too soon it’s over with the beautiful A Sunset from More. Its lyrics talk of the everyday in what others describe as ‘the happening of the year’ and it’s perhaps this sentiment – finding joy in what surrounds us – that underscores the story of pop’s greatest resurrection of recent years.

May Pulp surround us with their music, celebrating our shared outsiderdom and lifting us up when we need a little support for many years to come.

• Main pictures via Facebook courtesy Pulp Tickets
• Have you seen Pulp before and what did you think of it? Let us know what you thought in the comments below
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