The Measures Taken
A defunct site housing papers, articles and lengthier disquisitions by Owen Hatherley, now blogging only at Sit down man, you're a bloody tragedy.Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Pulp: Urbanism, Sexuality, Class (part one)
Oh I was 17, when I heard the countdown start
I've been promising a post on Pulp for as long as I've been blogging (which will be four years, soon enough) and the self-imposed pressure of this means that what follows shouldn't be considered as anything other than tentative steps towards some eventual completed opus on the subject (that way, I'll actually be able to write the damn thing) - so, this is unfinished, unformed stuff, which at some point in the future will be pulled together. At least, this post at Aloof from Inspiration and the replies give it some sort of currency. I wanted to write about Pulp and wanted to put it off endlessly for the same reason - I feel far too close to this stuff, to a somewhat uncomfortable and unintentionally amusing extent. Some of the reasons for this I might end up confessing here (oh, losing my virginity at 16 to Intro, that sort of thing) others are none of your sodding business.
It needs to be said, and people are reluctant to say it - Pulp were not only by some measure the finest British group of the 1990s, but they compete with their more obvious forbears. Roxy Music, even at their most chillingly Helmut Newton-esque ('In Every Dream Home' etc) never created as terrifying a vision of success and opulence achieved curdling into anomie and psychosis as 'This is Hardcore'; Morrissey never managed anything as perfectly vengeful as 'Common People', and the world created on their records from 1990-1994 is easily as obsessive, lyrically dense and inspired as The Fall at their peak. There's a certain sense in which The Smiths, or maybe My Bloody Valentine, were allowed to be some sort of last gasp of British pop (not Britpop, obviously, but as a serious, non-retro phenomenon), a critical consensus which wholly ignores the fact that in 1995 a group managed to send a motorik epic about class warfare to number 2. Some of the reasons for this critical timidity are quite understandable - their collaboration with the horrible spectacle of Britpop, the notion that Pulp were dominated by their 'retro' signifiers (although frankly, I can't see what makes their 1970s any less acceptable than Roxy's 1930s - both groups made music that could only have been made at that precise moment), and most of all the ambiguous victory of Jarvis Cocker, pop celebrity. Nonetheless, this is a group that need to be taken seriously, very seriously indeed. So what I'll be doing here, over several posts, is attempting to take them as seriously as possible. The way to do this is, of course, via the three things which run through all their best work - class, sex and psychogeography.
A hole in your heart, and one between your legs
Let's start at the beginning, which in Pulp's case is a very murky thing. They start out in 1981 as a quintessential minor post-punk group, a 'John Peel band', and their first Peel session shows them trying out various modes (Aztec Camera, Pigbag, Joy Division) to quite enjoyable but hardly world-shaking effect. Then there's the first album in 1983, It, which in sound and subject matter is basically Leonard Cohen without the sex. This was never a good idea, although it's not without a lush, gawky, Gregory's Girl charm, songs about a love which has clearly never been actually experienced, with the extended metaphor of 'My Lighthouse' being the most charming and ridiculous moment. However, as detailed in their Do you remember the first time? documentary, Jarvis loses his virginity around this point, and they become an immeasurably more interesting group very quickly.
The 1985 single 'Little Girl (with Blue Eyes)' is some sort of mid-60s Eurovision entry gone awry, with the pederastic title referring to a young woman charmed into marriage and childbirth, cheated into domesticity - 'so just forget about the paintings, cause you've got to get the washing done'. What makes it especially interesting is the luridness of the delivery, and with respect to the girl with 'a hole in your heart, and one between your legs...you've never had to wonder which one he's going to fill' you wonder, not for the first time, whether the singer is an observer of the woman's plight, or a participant. The other songs from the time show a grim view of sex as either torture (the frantic punk-funk of 'Mark of the Devil', with its plaint 'your past is just a bedroom full of implements of cruelty'), or as an element in bleak little observational dramas, with remarkable attention to detail: '97 Lovers', featuring a woman who joylessly sleeps with a builder beneath a poster of Roger Moore.
I'll keep you and I'll throw myself away
This bleakness becomes particularly unpalatable on Freaks, surely one of the most lugubrious records ever made. Sex here is universally horrible. Interminable, claustrophobic relationships ('The Never-Ending Story'), masturbation and megalomania ('Master of the Universe'), anorexia, the act itself as something horrifying. 'They Suffocate at Night' is surely the peak/nadir of this, and from the opening lines - 'his body loved her/his mind was set on other things' - there's something of a dualism problem here. It's also quite a bad record, mannered, dirge-like, appallingly produced. Songs which threaten to make some sort of Walker-esque grandeur or menace out of it all stumble on strained crooning and some decidedly icky lyrics. 'I Want You' (a song performed as late as 2002) is as good as it gets here, drawing on some of the subtlety and detail of 'Little Girl', and what's most notable is that it's desire itself that is most worrying. The awkward croon sings of something which is irresistible but which nonetheless should be resisted, the asceticism summed up surely in the declaration 'you've got to stamp upon its head!' Without ever being a particularly good record, Freaks is at least worthy of a chapter in The Sex Revolts all of its own, documenting very pungently and honestly a certain fear of coupling which runs through decades of pop.
Oh, Pitsmoor Woman!
It's incredible that two years later in 1989, almost the same group recorded the Separations LP (which wasn't released until 1992, however). The first single from the album, 'My Legendary Girlfriend' is a pounding disco opus clearly informed by acid house. Candida Doyle's array of old synthesisers dominate here for the first time, as they will all the group's finest moments. Italo-house pianos, shimmering, swelling synth-strings, strange whines, burbles and hums at the track's threshold, all conveying the sheer excitement of sex and, without wanting to evoke any other connotations of the phrase, the city. Out of Sheffield and living in London, the former hometown becomes the subject matter - and this is a sexualised city, where the post-industrial landscape is suffused with carnality in its every twist, turn, alleyway and precinct. The song begins with the protagonist in bed, listening to the titular girlfriend's breathing, then they wake up and take an oneiric walk through Sheffield. The temptation just to quote huge chunks of lyric here is unavoidable:
So I woke her...and we went walking through the sleeping town... down deserted streets... Frozen gardens grey in the moonlight...fences...down to the canal... Creeping slowly past cooling towers... Deserted factories...looking for an adventure... I wandered the streets calling your name... Jumping walls...hoping to see a light in the window... Let me in...let me come in...let me in tonight ... Oh I see you shivering in the garden...silver goose-flesh in the moonlight...
The strained croon is replaced by something which really, really shouldn't work - the breathy, spoken monologue, taken from Isaac Hayes or Barry White. Now that it's fairly familiar, we should remember just how unprecedented it actually was for a skinny, pale, indie rock singer to assume such a role completely without irony, without nudging or winking, and not only that but to pull it off, and to add a vocabulary of pants, yelps and squeals to the repertoire, which build and build to orgasmic proportions. The effect of house and techno on the group is not to attempt (in that clumsy, Mancunian baggy style ushered in by the Stone Roses) some sort of fusion based on lumpy funk-rock, but to take an only ostensibly backwards step to the disco from which house emerged. Except here Jarvis himself takes on the Donna Summer role, he becomes himself the sex object, only a couple of years after 'They Suffocate at Night'. And what seems to drive it is the city itself, only before mentioned in Freaks' horribly believable tale of a beating, 'Being Followed Home'. If Sheffield itself can be sexy, then so can he.
Separations is divided into two halves, one of which continues, vastly more successfully, the tortured balladry of Freaks, and the other of which descends into the urbanist sexdisco of 'My Legendary Girlfriend'. The first half is still full of tales of broken relationships and anguished couples, only here with a passion (and compassion) which is completely absent from the earlier record. 'She's Dead' is its peak, where a chorus of cheap synthesisers - modifying Noel Coward's quip about the 'potency of cheap music' into the sheer sadness of cheap instruments - creates a charity shop requiem, rendering all but unbearable this tale of death in a northern town, with the overtones of kitsch not toyed with, as so many lesser lights would, but embraced - here, Jarvis is heaven's own mobile disco crooner. The title track is almost as good, with a fantastic, vertiginous moment where a huge, absurd swell of Slavic violins suddenly gives way to Chicory Tip soundtracking early Antonioni, aided by the new vocabulary of heavy breathing and yelps. The second side includes one reasonably straight and not entirely successful Sheffield techno effort, 'This House is Condemned' - and more interestingly, two other disco epics attempting to follow the single. 'Death II' restores the sense of tragedy to the genre which the ironists had removed - this is disco in the same way as the bleak, dead-end world of the original Saturday Night Fever: 'watch my spirit melt away, down at the D-I-S-C-O'. In fact, the song seems to catalogue some sort of attempt to break out of the world of Freaks and the record's first side, where he tries to 'fill his head with other women', with a world of glamour, music and sex, but is constantly pulled back by poverty, and, perhaps uncomfortably, by a particular woman, reminded of it at the end of the night, with the ignominious return at 2am.
'Countdown' - the superior single version of which is above - is where for the first time you hear one major theme of the next few years. That is, disco as vehicle for proletarian (over)ambition, for the imperative to escape - and not just at the end of the week, but as a means of getting out, out of the provinces, out of poverty. This is melodrama as Fassbinder made it, courting ridiculousness, cruel, lurid and cheap, where the protagonist's overwhelming ego and jealousy leave only the option of self-advancement. Yet while Saturday Night Fever documents the more familiar working class 'Friday on my Mind' mentality of work/weekend, 'Countdown' is the disco of the dole fantasist - 'it could be tonight, if I ever leave this room'. That it actually did occur is worth a book or several in itself. This is the sound of someone accentuating his most absurd features in order to make himself into a superstar, in the best Warholian manner. The dancing and hand movements are to accentuate just how tall and thin he is, the effeminate yelps and breathiness court accusations of seediness (and 'pop perv' is as far as most analyses of sexuality in these records tends to go). This is 'vengeful self-creation' of a similar, but far more ruthlessly effective manner to that of Morrissey, who in the end opted for staying in his room. Pulp were clearly more interested in conquest, with all the dubiousness that entails.
Next up, in a week or so: Intro, His & Hers and the Sisters EP...
posted by owen hatherley # 10:49 AM 
Comments:
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Really enjoyed this post, ta. Especially looking forward to 'His & Hers' and 'Intro' write-ups...but would be cool if you tackled 'Different Class' too..know what you mean about it being a bit close, which is I try and avoid all their music at all costs these days..
'My Ledgendary Girlfriend' is also notable as it's the first of what, for want of a better word, could be called Pulp's 'long' songs (a list that includes the likes of Sheffield Sex City, His N Hers, Wickerman, Seductive Barry maybe - although that's almost too seamless, in a category of its own - This Is Hardcore, Streetlites, I Spy, David's Last Summer. Even the Inside Susan tryptich and Weeds are 'long songs' of sorts) which usually feature multiple sections, combine spoken word and singing, and inspire the most panting, squealing etc from Jarvis. These wide-open, hugely atmospheric songs really constitute Pulp's greatest claim to musical originality.
Yeah, it's those songs which really take them from a very good pop group into the pantheon of 20th century geniuses, and I'm planning to write about almost all of the songs you mention...it's a shame there was nothing cut from that cloth on Jarvis, and the amount of them definitely declines from Different Class onwards. I don't think he really knows his own strengths, if I may have the temerity to say so.
I'm planning to argue that they become a more conventional group at the exact point when they're supposedly more 'difficult' and 'experimental' on their last 2 (Russell Senior-less, and from the sound of it, mostly Candida-less) albums - both of which have some dreadful, lumpen rockist moments, although I can certainly forgive guff like 'Day after the Revolution' or 'Birds in your Garden' for 'Wickerman' and 'This is Hardcore'.
I'm planning to argue that they become a more conventional group at the exact point when they're supposedly more 'difficult' and 'experimental' on their last 2 (Russell Senior-less, and from the sound of it, mostly Candida-less) albums - both of which have some dreadful, lumpen rockist moments, although I can certainly forgive guff like 'Day after the Revolution' or 'Birds in your Garden' for 'Wickerman' and 'This is Hardcore'.
Althought the recent, full-length B-Side version of The Loss Adjuster (sorry, trainspotter alert!) was a marvellous return to that style. Interestingly, I once read an interview in which Jarvis said that they often arrived at songs through hours and hours of jamming and then working on the best bits that had emerged from that (whereas I'd always imagined that the song/chords came first), but that definitely make sense as far as those songs go.
Definitely looking forward to those analyses then... We Love Life, though, did still sound to me like it could have heralded a bright new future for the band, partly for its actual sound (looser, rougher round the edges than the rather clenched Chris Thomas productions)but also because they shook free of some standard 'Pulp'y trappings and chord progressions (Bar Italia, Have You Seen Her Lately, Do You Remeber The First Time, the verse on Underwear.. all remarkably similar with that major-to-minor chord change climax/let-down)
Definitely looking forward to those analyses then... We Love Life, though, did still sound to me like it could have heralded a bright new future for the band, partly for its actual sound (looser, rougher round the edges than the rather clenched Chris Thomas productions)but also because they shook free of some standard 'Pulp'y trappings and chord progressions (Bar Italia, Have You Seen Her Lately, Do You Remeber The First Time, the verse on Underwear.. all remarkably similar with that major-to-minor chord change climax/let-down)
great post - really looking forward to the next installment. that era pulp (seperations and intro) conjured this exotic sheffield of the mind, along with the early warp bleep records, etc, which eventually led my life down some 'interesting' avenues. i'm sure your comments box isn't the place for such self indulgence but i'm almost tempted to resurrect my blog to post on my own turbulent relationship with sheffield via pulp - it'd be interesting and/or therapeutic for me even if not necessarily so interesting for anyone else. brilliant stuff.
I, for one, would love to read about your Sheffield of the mind. And as far as self-indulgence goes, wait til I write about 'Misshapes'...
Re We Love Life - it is beautifully produced, esp compared to most of the Thomas stuff, but there's still so much platitude on there. For some reason Jarvis has decided that he wants to be a classicist pop songwriter (cf the first few tracks on the solo LP, and loads of things from 'Something Changed' onwards) and it baffles me as to why he would care - when you can write something like 'Sheffield Sex City' or 'Wickerman' why would you want to be a minor Bacharach? I will definitely look up the B-side 'Loss Adjuster' though, thanks - all trainspotting welcome here!
Re We Love Life - it is beautifully produced, esp compared to most of the Thomas stuff, but there's still so much platitude on there. For some reason Jarvis has decided that he wants to be a classicist pop songwriter (cf the first few tracks on the solo LP, and loads of things from 'Something Changed' onwards) and it baffles me as to why he would care - when you can write something like 'Sheffield Sex City' or 'Wickerman' why would you want to be a minor Bacharach? I will definitely look up the B-side 'Loss Adjuster' though, thanks - all trainspotting welcome here!
Nicey. Agree totally about the Sheffield crooner as opposed to classist song writer. Intro's is my fave. But I suppose you can't come back to Sheffield and do kitchen sink once you're famous. I suppose that's why fame was such a shock to the system.
Oh don't forget the fanzine Pulp People. A great source of all sorts of stuff in pre tinternet dayz. Well outside the confines of the normal arty press. Promoted thing's Mark's film night "little Stabs of Happiness", new bands such as Tindersticks, Denim and Electric Sound of Joy. Promoted old stuff too, like Human League, Kraftwerk and Lee Hazlewood.
Started by Mark Webber and I think laterly ran by think an old girlfriend of his called 'Alex'. It was ran in a very down to earth way. Not by a record company or owt like that.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010202131600/http://pulponline.com/
Oh don't forget the fanzine Pulp People. A great source of all sorts of stuff in pre tinternet dayz. Well outside the confines of the normal arty press. Promoted thing's Mark's film night "little Stabs of Happiness", new bands such as Tindersticks, Denim and Electric Sound of Joy. Promoted old stuff too, like Human League, Kraftwerk and Lee Hazlewood.
Started by Mark Webber and I think laterly ran by think an old girlfriend of his called 'Alex'. It was ran in a very down to earth way. Not by a record company or owt like that.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010202131600/http://pulponline.com/
Hey, I bought your book yesterday! Plenty of food for thought there, been flicking through before giving it a proper reading - especially liked the criticism of the bad rock that ruins This is Hardcore...
Haha, hope you enjoy it. Glad someone finally agrees with me about Hardcore, although I do think I might have been a bit overly harsh on it in retrospect. Haven't listened to it in ages (years, probably) but found myself singing Help the Aged in the car the other day, and that's got to count for something right?
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