God, Pulp have been around forever, or at least that's the way it seems.
The oddly shaped Jarvis Cocker and his band of northern misfits had drifted around on the edges of the big time for years before they had their big breakthrough with the Common People single and suddenly became the oldest overnight successes there has ever been.
They followed up the massive success of the single with Different Class, a definitive statement of their art, which contains all the brilliant singles which they put out in that extraordinarily successful run of there's - All Sorted For E's and Wizz, Something's Changed, Disco 2000, such wonderful, wonderful pop music.
Those songs are undoubtedly instantly catchy and draw the listener in like the best addictive pop, but this album is about a great deal more than a few hits.
Cocker is a brilliant writer and charismatic performer with his short sighted stick insect stance and has a handy way with words.
Some of the dark little ditties on this album are so jaded, cynical and world weary it would make you want to cry if they weren't so bloody well realised and admirable.
Cocker deals in the seamier side of life - sex, guilt, cheating, sex, theft, adultery, more sex - he's an obsessive writer, but he manages to paint some wonderful little short stories over an incessant, attractive brand of pop that made Pulp for a short while immense contenders.
Their reign at the top was surprisingly short lived, culminating in the patchy and decidedly inferior This Is Hardcore album and Help The Aged single and similar dross.
It's a great shame, because the band proved with Different Class they could be wonderfully inventive and addictive and write ace pop choons. I wish it could have lasted forever, but at least we have this to remember them by.
The NME summarised this wonderful album thus: “He’s a dirty old bastard, that Jarvis Cocker. You'd better lock up your underwear when he's around and check the wardrobe for unwanted visitors. Sniff the continental quilt for those tell-tale deposits and make sure the bedroom curtains are closed so tight that nothing can be seen from the outside. Then, when everything seems secure, maybe you should wonder about the loyalty of those you love, or at least those you think you love. You see, nobody's really safe.”
Typical NME that, but it sort of captures the sleazy Pulp world perfectly, and Our Jarv is certainly obsessed with sex and the darker side of life, but transforms potentially adolescent themes into something dark and extremely macabre, fashioning a land of betrayal, guilt and lust in a way that previously few other than Elvis Costello had managed, rambling on about “When you raise your pencil skirt like a veil before my eyes Like the look upon his face as he's zipping up his flies” and “in all that time I just wanted you to come home unexpectedly one afternoon And catch us at it in the front room”.
Jarvis has penned some masterful lyrics here and is peculiarly English in the same way that the Fall’s Mark E Smith is also peculiarly English, using the everyday trivia and mundane as the stuff of his shallow and claustrophobic little world.
The room is cold and has been like this for several months If I close my eyes I can visualise everything in it right down Right down to the broken handle on the third drawer down of the dressing table And the world outside this room has also assumed a familiar shape The same events stuffed in a slightly different order each day Just like a modern shopping centre And it's so cold - yeah it's so cold
There’s true genius in some of this stuff and it comes from the very normality of the thing, which Cocker somehow turns into something much more sleazy and gripping. It takes style and imagination and a very different world view to do this sort of thing and that’s what Different Class is all about, the difference of being very, very normal and ugly and ungainly and torn apart by lust-loathing…. Different Class, the Greatest Hits for the 90’s… Long live the seamy, sleazy, claustrophobic, ugly hordes of the world…
Full track listing- Mis-shapes Pencil Skirt Common People I Spy Disco 2000 Live Bed Show Something Changed Sorted For E’s & Wizz F E E L I N G C A L L E D L O V E Underwear Monday Morning Bar Italia
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It became increasingly apparent during 1995 that the answer to the question "Blur or ... more
Oasis?" was, in fact, "Pulp".Different Classwas the sound of a band so on "it" that they defined "it". Thirty years of fury, frustration, sexual longing, class angst a...
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It became increasingly apparent during 1995 that the answer to the question "Blur or ... more
Oasis?" was, in fact, "Pulp". Different Class was the sound of a band so on "it" that they defined "it". Thirty years of fury, frustration, sexual longing, class angst...
Postage & Packaging: Free! Availability: Usually dispatched within 24 hours...
Advantages: Brilliant album, full of emotionful songs that defined Britpop, easy to get into, intelligent lyrics, Jarvis Cocker's voice Disadvantages: -
Ihatemusic 24.12.2006 (24.12.2006)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Different Class - Pulp
Advantages: Sex, drugs, and common people! Brilliant, catchy, important lyrics Disadvantages: some songs take a little getting used to; Can't I give it more than 5 Stars?
OKkaraoke 31.10.2002 (27.11.2002)
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Review of Different Class - Pulp
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