You, dear reader, are given the chance to vote in 17 categories from October this year to tell us your favourite theatre, music, TV, film and podcast of 2025.
By Neil Durham
WHEN?: Friday 13 June 2025, tour runs through 26 September 2025
WORTH A LOOK?: *****
Setlist: Spike Island; Grown Ups; Slow Jam; Sorted For Es and Whizz; Disco 2000; F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E; Tina; Help The Aged; Farmers’ Market; This Is Hardcore; Sunrise; Something Changed; The Fear; O.U. (Gone Gone); Party Hard; Acrylic Afternoons; Do You Remember The First Time?; Mis-Shapes; Got To Have Love; Babies; Common People; A Sunset
Tonight Pulp discover shortly before taking the stage at this arena for the 1st time that More, their 1st new album for 24 years, is their 3rd UK charttopper, their 1st since 1998’s This Is Hardcore.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
Tracklist: Spike Island; Tina; Grown Ups; Slow Jam; Farmers Market; My Sex; Got To Have Love; Background Noise; Partial Eclipse; The Hymn Of The North; A Sunset
30 years ago we watched Pulp headline Glastonbury and never dreamed that 28 years later at their Eventim Apollo gig we’d be yearning for new material from them.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****1/2
This is the triumphant return to form from a band who release their 1st new album for 24 years in 10 days.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
We last saw Pulp live at Hammersmith’s Eventim Apollo in July 2023 and wrote: ‘We absolutely yearn for new material as good as those songs like Common People which soundtracked and shaped our adulthood’.
WORTH A LOOK?: ***1/2
WHEN?: Tuesday 9 November 2021, touring until 12 November 2021
SETLIST: She’s A Lady; House Music All Night Long; Slow Jam; Fat Children; Am I Missing Something?; Sometimes I Am Pharoah; Big Julie; Swanky Modes; C**** Are Still Running The World; Must I Evolve?; Children Of The Echo; Further Complications; Aline; My Legendary Girlfriend
We haven’t seen Jarvis Cocker live for a quarter of a century and when we last did his band Pulp were headlining V Festival in Essex but it felt, for us at least, that they’d peaked with the appropriately titled Different Class album.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
OUT: now
Hot Chip caught our ear earlier this year with a fine remix of Daði Freyr’s Eurovision winner-that-never was (clip below) but it is with this dancefloor juggernaut that they really strike gold.
WORTH A LOOK?: ***1/2
OUT: now
TRACKLIST: Save The Whale; Must I Evolve?; Am I Missing Something?; House Music All Night Long; Sometimes I Am Pharaoh; Swanky Modes; Children Of The Echo
The first Pulp album we fell in love with (His’n’Hers) contains a track that pinpoints the exact moment when summer dies (David’s Last Summer), ‘the whole sound of summer packing its bags and preparing to leave town’.
WORTH A LOOK?: ****
WHERE?: Southbank Centre
WHEN?: 10/5/18, booking to 29/7/18
STOP PRESS: Super Troupers arrives at The 02 6/12/19 to 31/8/20 Tickets
Did you ever see ABBA live? Probably not because, as we learn here, they remained in Sweden for all but three months of the 10 years they were at their most popular.
