★★★★☆
On their first tour in more than a decade, Pulp use arena rock flamboyance to make the English everyman a symbol worth celebrating.Pulp may have always baulked at being lumped in with Britpop, but the irony is they always seemed like the most quintessentially British band of that cultural movement. The likes of Oasis and Blur were signposted for stardom from the off, while Jarvis Cocker’s Sheffielders were the art rock outsiders who took nearly 20 years to make it big. Fronted by an English everyman dressed in charity shop chic, their songs acknowledged the awkward sexuality and class struggles that, to this day, are still inherent to UK life. It goes a long way to explaining why Pulp remain relevant despite their every attempt not to be. The band followed their Britpop-era acclaim, earned on breakthrough albums His ’n’ Hers and Different Class, with This Is Hardcore: a depressive rebellion against the Beatles- and Kink-inspired scene they were inadvertently buoyed by. Later, in 2002, they flat-out broke up and refused to reunite for almost a decade. Then they broke up again, from 2013 to 2023. But 25 years of fighting your own fame is fruitless when you’ve written songs as infectious and relatable as ‘Common People’ and ‘Babies’.
CREDIT: Sarah Louise Bennett
CREDIT: Sarah Louise Bennett
READ MORE: Jamie T at Finsbury Park review | A carefree throwback on the longtime rabble-rouser’s biggest stage yet
An encore of ‘Like a Friend’, ‘Underwear’, ‘Common People’ and ‘Razzmatazz’ serves as tonight’s victory lap – and, with this run of shows being called the This Is What We Do for an Encore tour, could potentially be the wrap-up of their career playing the capital. As Finsbury Park howls such lyrics as the politically charged “You’ll never live like common people” and the sexually awkward “I want to see you standing in your underwear”, it’s a closing reminder of what made this band Britpop’s much-needed underdogs: knitting charm out of the thorny realities of working-class life.
