“Something stopped me dead in my tracks,” goes the first verse of “Spike Island”—a song that was released last year and sung by Pulp front man Jarvis Cocker—“I was headed for disaster and then I turned back / I was wrestling with a coat hanger, can you guess who won? / The universe shrugged, shrugged then moved on.”
As the opening song on More, Pulp’s first studio album in nearly a quarter-century, “Spike Island” is a rock star’s stab at humility. In the 24 years since 2001’s We Love Life and the band’s subsequent breakup, the universe wasn’t exactly waiting on tenterhooks for their reunion. But a lot of us hadn’t entirely moved on. Last summer, just as England was awash in Oasis Live 2025 punters clad in head-to-toe collaborative Adidas merch, More debuted at No. 1 on the U.K. Albums Chart, and Pulp played a pair of sold-out concerts at London’s behemoth O2 Arena.
