Having seduced the fickle mistress of the music 'scene' with entertaining glamour and peerless style in the mid-Nineties, there has been an acute comedown to Pulp's party.
Three years ago, 'This Is Hardcore' joined the prevailing horror of deflated reality and post-Coke blues in capturing a dislocated and disenfranchised landscape, the absolute antitheses of the neon abandon they once revelled in.
All told, however, it was a great record, and one no less painful to produce than this, the long-awaited and perilously fraught successor, which has taken more sculpting than Elvis Presley's quiff. But surely with a title like 'We Love Life', the LP's much-mooted back to nature slant and everlasting avant-garde legend Scott Walker at the production helm, this is the valedictory, emotional resurrection after the disabling, depressive hangover? Well yes. But as good as this record is, there are still a litany of acidic realities to swallow.
Musically, Pulp have never needed a great deal of direction, such is their ceaselessly inventive bent. However, 'We Love Life' benefits enormously from Walker's production right from the off, as the droning, grimy march of 'Weeds' is unveiled with Spectorish drama and bravado, gently easing into the woozy, menacing hypnosis of 'Origin Of The Species'.
Indeed, the best of this album can be heard when the two minds co-exist: Check the lush, autumnal chopping strings of 'The Trees' and the swirling, enveloping climax of 'Sunrise', which takes this album and Pulp's career to new heights at three minutes and the point of widescreen orchestral overdose.
Elsewhere, the beguiling, almost poetic sprawling cinema of 'The Wicker Man', is classic storytelling from Cocker, a man who retains a convincing working class nostalgia, despite his superstar status, as tomato ketchup, nougat and Pre-Raphalities come and go amid a depressingly evocative snapshot of Northern Britain.
The more rudimentary but nonetheless spellbinding adrenalin of 'The Night That Minnie Timperley Died' completes the many highs of 'We Love Life', but there is a tangible drop in quality in the last third of the album, before the astonishing 'Sunrise'.
Equally, it certainly isn't all trees, birds and the wonder of the world. Doomed relationships and "f*ck-ups" litter the scenery, people die, while the oddly-titled 'I Love Life' is a gruesome rites of passage, beginning with the lines "Mum and Dad have sentenced you to death". All of this is without even contemplating a latent lack of anything as indulgently joyful as the likes of 'Disco 2000' or 'Common People'.
But at its best, 'We Love Life' features some of the finest British rock music of recent years. The party may be over but the band, thankfully, will play on.
