Pulp announce comeback album ‘More’ with festival-ready banger ‘Spike Island’

Pulp have announced a return with details of their first new album in 24 years ‘More’ and the festival-ready single ‘Spike Island’.

• READ MORE: Pulp’s Mark Webber on his photo book and the band’s new songs: “It’s somewhere between mature and frothy pop music”

Jarvis Cocker and the Britpop icons have had fans waiting on new material having signed a new record deal with Rough Trade last year after reuniting again in 2023 for the first Pulp shows since 2012 – playing new songs while out on the road, such as ‘Farmer’s Market’, ‘Spike Island’, ‘My Sex’, ‘You’ve Got To Have Love’, ‘Background Noise’ and ‘A Sunset’.

Then, last summer, it was reported that the group were “back in the studio” after frontman Cocker was spotted in Walthamstow, London. The singer was pictured carrying an orange Rough Trade tote bag while waving at the camera.

Now the band have announced ‘More’ – their first album almost 24 years – will be released on Friday June 6. The album was recorded and mixed at Orbb Studio in Walthamstow E17 and produced by James Ford. The album is also their first since the passing of bassist Steve Mackay, who died in 2023. The record is dedicated to his memory.

Speaking on BBC 6 Music this morning, the band confirmed that “the record has been done for a while” and the wait between records felt like “a lifetime”, before completing it in three weeks.

“[Playing live] was a big influence on it – that we played and the songs came back to life,” said Cocker. “We did play one new song towards the end of the tour and no one threw stuff at us or left to go to the bar’

“We chose to do it quickly… it wanted to come out.”

The new single ‘Spike Island’ is a synth-led indie pop gem that sees Cocker reflect on life at a point of great change: “Dead in my tracks/ I was heading for disaster, then I turned back. The universe shrugged, shrugged and moved on”.

It is also a nod to the historic Spike Island gig that The Stone Roses, played in Cheshire in May 1990. The show saw The Stone Roses perform to 28,000 fans at the site of a disused chemical plant – becoming one of the most legendary gigs of all time and seen as the precursor to the Britpop era.

Pulp have made reference to the Spike Island show in the past – namely in their song ‘Sorted For E’s & Wizz’, which was shared as part of their 1995 album ‘Different Class’. Speaking on 6 Music, Cocker confirmed that he “never went to the concert, but I’d spoken to people who went and picked things up second hand from it” to piece together images and phrases that captured the show and the mood of the occasion.

Lyrically the idea for ‘Spike Island’ came from Jason Buckle (of Relaxed Muscle) who co-wrote the song and went to Stone Roses’ infamous Spike Island gig where a DJ repeatedly shouted, “Spike Island, come alive!”

“I was told that someone was interested in investigating A.I. & did I have any ideas?,” he said in a press release about the accompanying video. “The first idea I had was to animate the photographs that Rankin & Donald took for ‘Different Class’: after all, back in 1995 they had been an ‘artificial’ way of dropping us into real-life situations & getting an album cover done whilst we were too busy recording the music for that album to pose for pictures. No brainer.”

He continued: “It was my initial idea to produce a kind of “making of” video that showed how the photos had come to be taken – but as soon as I fed the first shot into the AI app I realised that wasn’t going to happen. So I  decided to “go with the flow” & see where the computer led me.

“All the moving images featured in the video are the result of me feeding in a still image & then typing in a “prompt” such as: “The black & white figure remains still whilst the bus in the background drives off” which led to the sequence where the coach weirdly slides towards the cut-out of me.

“The weekend I began work on the video was a strange time: I went out of the house & kept expecting weird transformations of the surrounding environment due to the images the computer had been generating. The experience had marked me. I don’t know whether I’ve recovered yet…..”

He added: “I have to thank Julian House for some expert post-production work & Rankin & Donald Milne for allowing me to use their work in this way. As it says in text at the end of the video, I think what they did for Pulp back in 1995 was “Human Intelligence at its best”.

“My final thought? H.I. Forever!”

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In a statement about the album, Cocker shared: “This is the first Pulp album since “We Love Life” in 2001. Yes: the first Pulp album for 24 years. How did that happen?

“Well: when we started touring again in 2023, we practiced a new song called “Hymn of the North” during soundchecks & eventually played it at the end of our second night at Sheffield Arena. This seemed to open the floodgates: we came up with the rest of the songs on this album during the first half of 2024. A couple are revivals of ideas from last century. The music for one song was written by Richard Hawley. The music for another was written by Jason Buckle. The Eno family sing backing vocals on a song. There are string arrangements written by Richard Jones & played by the Elysian Collective.

“The album was recorded over three weeks by James Ford in Walthamstow, London, starting on November 18th, 2024. This is the shortest amount of time a Pulp album has ever taken to record. It was obviously ready to happen.

“These are the facts. We hope you enjoy the music. It was written & performed by four human beings from the North of England, aided & abetted by five other human beings from various locations in the British Isles. No A.I. was involved during the process.

“This album is dedicated to Steve Mackey.

“This is the best that we can do.

“Thanks for listening.”

The band are also set to perform on The Jonathan Ross Show on ITV on Saturday (April 12), following an interview with Cocker.

Pulp release ‘More’ on June 6 via Rough Trade. Check out the full tracklist below.

The ‘More’ tracklist is:

1. ‘Spike Island’
2. ‘Tina’
3. ‘Grown Ups’
4. ‘Slow Jam’
5. ‘Farmers Market’
6. ‘My Sex’
7. ‘Got To Have Love’
8. ‘Background Noise’
9. ‘Partial Eclipse’
10. ‘A Hymn Of The North’
11. ‘A Sunset’

Speaking to NME last year about the band’s new material, guitarist Mark Webber said: “We’re older so it’s a bit more mature, but that makes it sound boring! It’s somewhere between mature and frothy pop music.”

Pulp’s seventh and latest studio album, ‘We Love Life’, came out back in 2001 via Island Records. They then shared ‘After You’ – their first single in over a decade – through Rough Trade in 2012, as part of their first reunion. The track was produced by LCD Soundsystem frontman James Murphy.

The band have already unveiled a string of 2025 live dates, which include a huge homecoming gig at Tramlines 2025 in Sheffield, and a headline set at Bilbao BKK in Spain, and a full 2025 UK arena tour. Visit here for tickets and more information.

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