Pulp’s seminal 1998 album This Is Hardcore turns 25 next year, and the band has a reunion in the works to celebrate the occasion. Jarvis Cocker said as much at a recent Q&A, teasing, “Next year Pulp are going to play some concerts!”
Cocker was speaking at a Guardian-hosted talk and Q&A about his new memoir Good Pop, Bad Pop when a fan asked about a mysterious clip the Pulp frontman posted to Instagram on July 20th. In the video, the words “What exactly do you do for an encore?” appear over a black screen. The same line appears in “This Is Hardcore,” which Cocker was sure to point out in his response.
“It was deliberately cryptic,” Cocker said. “It’s a line from ‘This Is Hardcore’… Next year Pulp are going to play some concerts!”
When and where, exactly, these concerts will take place has yet to be revealed, but if a Pulp reunion does occur in 2023, it will mark the band’s first live performances since 2012. They shared a one-off single called “After You” that same year, while their last studio album was 2001’s We Love Life.
Last October, Cocker shared the solo LP CHANSON d’ENNUI TIP-TOP, a French-language album that served as a companion piece to Wes Anderson’s film The French Dispatch.
Next question on THAT Instagram post from last week. JC: “It was deliberately cryptic. It’s a line from This Is Hardcore… Next year Pulp are going to play some concerts!”
HUGE APPLAUSE!!!
— Acrylic Afternoons (@AcrylcAftrnoons) July 25, 2022