The Universe Shrugged, Then Moved On

Pulp “Spike Island”

I don’t know if it was intentional but I love that the lead single from the first Pulp album in 24 years feels so 80s new wave. It’s important to keep in mind that while the band’s creative and commercial success was in the 90s, they’re actually a band from the 1980s. Their original contemporaries – if not necessarily peers – were the likes of Duran Duran, Human League, Talk Talk, OMD, and Ultravox. “Spike Island” calls back to that 80s sensibility: enormous implied scale, lightly funky, unapologetically corny synth tones and hand claps, vaguely optimistic in tone. It’s bold and bright and gives a lot of space for Jarvis Cocker to do his thing. You can’t put a small frame around a persona that big.

Among other things, “Spike Island” is a song about reconnecting with something in yourself, or maybe it’s more like finding peace with who you’ve always been after trying to expand your sense of self. “I was born to perform, it’s a calling,” Cocker sings, “I exist to do this.” A young man sings something like that and it sounds like bragging; a man in his early 60s sings it and comes across more like relief and self-awareness.

There are two times in this song where Jarvis sings about making the choice to avoid self-destruction, and I’m not sure whether he’s talking about why he moved away from Pulp, or why he ended up coming back to it. Could be a little of both. But in either case, it feels so good to hear him sing “I took a breather and decided not to ruin my life.” It doesn’t need to be about his story to resonate. It’s helpful just to hear someone say with some authority that sometimes you need to do that.

Buy it from Bandcamp.