Pulp: Press views

We Love Life: Pulp at their best?

Press reviews of We Love Life.

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The Sunday Times

Now, Jarvis has gone back to nature and got back on form: he can still turn out a singalong chorus or a jaw-dropping hook. The producer, Scott Walker (yes, the Scott Walker), has coaxed career-best performances from the band on epic tracks like Wicker Man and Sunrise (a tour-de-force from musicians whose light is so often hidden under the bushel of Jarvis's media-friendly personality).

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The Independent

We Love Life extends This Is Hardcore's mid-life soul-searching even further, its bucolic motifs failing to disguise the underlying mood of ill-tempered disillusion. More worrying still is the apparent dismissal from Pulp's work of the chiming, anthemic melodies that finally hoisted them into the public ear after almost two decades of struggling at the margins.

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The Guardian

We Love Life effortlessly pulls off a series of difficult balancing acts. It is intelligent without being deliberately obscure, grown-up but not pompous, darkly powerful but never overpowering. For all its rich melodies and superb songwriting, however, it is not an album to restore its makers to the pages of Smash Hits and the tabloid press. Bearing in mind its predecessor's grim view of stardom, though, that is probably for the best.

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London Evening Standard

Weeds compares street-level originators of style and fashion with the parasites who exploit them - full Marx for that - while Wickerman escorts you through Sheffield's subterranean rivers as they flow through the Victorian sewers, Cocker acting as the tour guide pointing out the failed dreams that lie above. His writing is knife-sharp, steely and full of life. This isn't rock'n'roll, it's baroque and droll, with a serious subtext. Returning to fundamentals, We Love Life is Pulp at their best.