Live Review: 'Exceptional' Pulp delight fans with sold-out show at Birmingham’s Utilita Arena

Pulp’s comeback album, More, took 24 years to arrive, but the public was happy enough to proffer them with their third #1 this past week.

The band did experience arenas back in their mid-90s heyday, but tonight can they make it clear that they truly belong in the aircraft hangers?

Launching with gusto into recent single Spike Island, the large band - with core members Jarvis Cocker, Candida Doyle, Nick Banks, and Mark Webber - sound magnificent from the off. “Birmingham?” Cocker begins “Tonight its Burn-ingham. It may be hot outside, but we can make it hotter in here!”

Sprinkling the 22-song set with selections from More, the new songs are well-received, though they’ve had no time to become the national anthems that those famed 1990s singles have now become.

It’s not long before we head back three decades to a time when Different Class changed the musical landscape, putting the arty side of Britpop firmly in the mainstream.

Cue rave whistles and an expansive lazer shooting out above our heads to introduce (the once controversial) Sorted For E’s and Whizz.

Dropping Disco 2000 so early into the set was an eerie reminder of their 2000 concerts when they transgressively chose to begin the show with Common People.

Furious dancing erupts throughout the crowd, which is climatically accompanied by exploding streamers from the ceiling. And why not? This is a celebration of the second career act, after all.

Help The Aged keeps the long-time fans in rapture and who isn’t amused by huge crowds singing about sniffing glue?

The sociopathic melodrama of More cut Tina really hits home in this live setting.

At this juncture Cocker takes to throwing grapes and chocolate into the audience.

Why he does this is anyone’s guess, but the eccentric icon has clearly not become a middle-aged bore.

The first half of the show ends on a dramatic one-two of This Is Hardcore - Cocker reclining on a leather chair and sipping on an espresso - and the world-weary Sunrise.

The latter is given extra emotional heft from Cocker’s explanation that “if you stay up late enough you end up suffering with an allergy to sunlight. Here’s how I overcame it”.

During the interval the audience gets to vote for a song to be played during the second half, simply by screaming the loudest when song names appear on the giant screen.

It’s a populist touch, from a band that cares.

Before long we are off again, with a low-key recommencement of a semi-acoustic version of Something Changed, band sat in front of the aforementioned red curtain.

The Fear is a surprise choice of album track to shift gears up, but it works in spades. O.U.(Gone Gone) has become a staple in the reformation years and with its simple disco beat and refrain perfect for audience participation it truly is a welcome addition. The interval song winner is the peerless Razzmatazz, their standalone 1993 single whose singalong chorus became the blueprint for prime-era Pulp, while still maintaining the minutiae verse lyrics about love-gone-wrong and life-on-the-dole, which gives any Pulp song their unique flavour.

The His ’n’ Hers era is well represented by firstly Acrylic Afternoons - with Cocker down with the front row, handing out Pulp-branded tea (“just another cup of tea please”) and then an incredibly energetic run through of Do You Remember The First Time.

“Would you like to hear a song about the place we come from?” asks our Jarv.

Cue a huge roar, a sound that returns for the introductory riff of Babies that he plays on his rarely-seen electric guitar.

If Pulp only wrote this 1992 song, their entire existence would have been worth it, such is its wit and splendour.

They finish the main set with the Britpop anthem Common People and it is quite something to behold it being bellowed back by an army of middle-aged devotees.

We get more streamers, plus this time cannon explosions too, at the strain of the final notes. What a crescendo for the senses.

A brief, somewhat underwhelming encore of A Sunset, the last song on More, with lovely choir vocals from The Elysian Collective, is a homely finale at odds with the previous few songs.

Pulp have to oscillate between being anthemic hitmakers and sharing the meditative elegies that Cocker now writes.

Regardless, tonight Pulp have been exceptional. Cockers portrayal of British working class, “arts-and-crafts” life has aged as well as the French wine he no doubt likes to sup on.

It’s a privilege to witness the UK’s greatest ever art-rock band to infiltrate the public’s consciousness since The Great Dame himself did it with Ziggy.

Make no mistake, that is their artistic level - and let’s hope this ‘encore’ period of Pulp stretches on longer than 2025.

Pulp played:

Spike Island

Grown Ups

Slow Jam

Sorted for E's & Wizz

Disco 2000

F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.

Help the Aged

Tina

Farmers Market

This Is Hardcore

Sunrise

(Interval)

Something Changed

The Fear

O.U. (Gone, Gone)

Razzmatazz

Acrylic Afternoons

Do You Remember the First Time?

Mis-Shapes

Got to Have Love

Babies

Common People

Encore: A Sunse