Pulp: We Love Life poll

but Sunrise will kill!

lol that said I am voting for Wickerman

got some good memories of Birds in Your Garden

"The Trees," you gits. Love those strings.

'the birds in your garden' is pretty damn creepy. that said i'm probably gonna give it the nod.

Bad Cover Version has one of my favorite videos ever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbE9zfEeZuw
(embedding disabled)

who is the original Carlos?

voted for the trees, but this is suchhh a great album

wickerman the clear winner for me

Wickerman, followed by Roadkill.

"Weeds". Although the two tracks from the single are also great.

those useless trees

Wickerman!

this album is really lightyears ahead of all their other stuff, imo.

Why did it get so slagged off at the time?

I thought it great, still do.

My 3rd-choice would probably be the astonishing twee-pop-ditty-turned-Mogwai-explosion-mindfuck that is the quasi title-track...it's a remarkable song, and worthy of props. Fantastic quality and great sequencing all the way through this album, though; it vies His'N'Hers as their very best.

Minnie Timperley ftw

iirc the album wasn't slated as such, but Island did fuck-all to promote it for reasons I can't recall and the singles didn't fare well (I honestly thought Bad Cover Version was going to go top 3 on the back of its spectacular video!).

Birds In Your Garden wins

oh shit. and Wickerman. dilemma.

BIYG is a nice pop song, Wickerman is a devastating, brilliantly-composed 8-minute trawl through JC's psyche and the geography of a forlorn urban space...should be an easy one imo ;)

When you think you're treading water, but you're just learning how to drown.
And a song comes on the radio telling you that "The Only Way is Down".
You're out of luck, you're out of time, get out of here.
Your lover just traded you in for the very same model but a much more recent year.
It will not stop, it will get worse from day to day 'til you admit that you're a fuck-up; like the rest of us.
Oh, that's the time you fall apart .
That's the time the teardrops start & that's the time you fall in love again.

Loved it at the time, and I'm pretty sure it holds up. Will listen to again and decide.

I love this album so much but admit it was a grower at the time. Having trouble deciding between useless trees and the colour of tomato ketchup.

Am I a bad person for thinking that The Trees is the weakest track on the album?

I'll need to listen to this again, for the first time in mnny years, before voting. As it is I'm leaning towards Birds or Wickerman. No, I didn't much care for The Trees either iirc.

Am I a bad person for thinking that The Trees is the weakest track on the album?

No, but you are a deaf person.

They already did the sample-loop big-single thingy with This Is Hardcore, and where that song was tense and affecting, I find The Trees to be slightly undeveloped, trite, and just the wrong side of schmaltzy, especially where the melody and much of the instrumentation is concerned. There are bits where it shows something of what it could have been (the atonal middle-eight, the synth excursion with automated shaker just afterwards), but doesn't take its ideas far enough for me. The bass in the chorus is nice. But then Scott Walker's production throughout the album is fab.

Minnie! Anyone else see its debut(?) at Reading?

imo This is Hardcore already sounds dated and overproduced. I sorta agree w/ jag's description - The Trees *does* sound undeveloped, trite and schmaltzy, but it seems like an effect that's both self-aware and purposeful - fits the lyrics perfectly.

Has there ever been a "fetch reclusive famous person to do production" album that actually worked?

Apart from this one?

xp

I guess 'already' is the wrong word for something from 11 years ago. regardless, TIH has some great songs on it, but I think WLL's sound and content matter has aged / will age so much better.

shame Walker doesn't do more production work. this album sounds stunning. xxp

Weeds & Weeds II are both terrific, the whole album is very good, but Sunrise is one of the best album closers, and maybe the best career closer, ever.

.. if you don't count "The last day of the Miner's Strike"...

Hmph.

Nick OTM, but...

the best career closer, ever.

...is a CLAIM. Worthy of its own thread. NB there's a rather large Talk Talk-shaped elephant in the room :p

You doin' it, or wot?

oh you are...

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/41/Pulp-We_Love_Life.jpg

i always hated the cover, it felt like they gave up. on the other hand, the music is outstanding.

the 'we love life' bit was added after 9/11, no? I think the rest of it is really fitting.

don't think so. my UK copy has that text on it. the PULP is green though.

Sunrise, i do not play this album often, but i find myself playing the first 4 tracks and then zapping to Sunrise heh.

Trees, great great song

I still find the bit about the second side of Til The Band Comes In being rubbish pretty funny given the circumstances.

Also Roadkill is incredibly underrated. Stunning.

Am the only one that voted for Weeds II, I'm betting.

Minnie! Anyone else see its debut(?) at Reading?

I think so. I did see them at Reading around that time, so probably.

Never got into this album :(

imo This is Hardcore already sounds dated and overproduced.

waht

Even at the time people were saying the second half of TIH was overproduced. But i think the production is about the same across
the whole record; it's just the quality of the songs in the second half doesn't stand up to the dense production so the balance is wrong.

was mostly referring to the title track

Right, which is like totally bananas crazytalk

'seductive barry' is brilliant and wonderful, as is 'the day after the revolution' and to a lesser extent 'glory days'...'tv movie', 'a little soul', 'i'm a man' and 'sylvia' are actually pretty substandard so yeah i see your point...it's an album that needed editing

(The only songs I really remember from TIH are the title track, "Seductive Barry", "Help The Aged" and "The Fear" but all of those are great. Oh, and I know everyone loved "Dishes" to death but I always hated that song.)

Those might be the four best songs, yeah. I made the fantastic and accidental discovery that a mixtape of every Pulp song from the later-period (His'n'Hers onward) albums of over 5:30 in length is pretty much flawless, give a My Legendary Girlfriend and take a Sylvia, and provides an excellent career retrospective

(the four best songs if we don't include 'The Day After The Revolution' which is probably marginally better than 'Help The Aged')

finally had a chance to listen to this again today, it still holds up very well. voting for The Birds in Your Garden" though i was very close to voting for "Bad Cover Version."

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I've always remembered this album fondly, but listening to it today I think it's pretty patchy, might like one or both of Jarvis's solo albums better now. "Weeds" is a pretty great opener, though.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Wow, pretty much all my favorite tracks ("Weeds," "I Love Life," "Minnie") got poor showings.

Honestly kinda irritates me the way the same personification-of-nature lyrical conceit is used on at least 3 songs, gets tiresome.

this album is so so good, no other british indie rock feebs got close to it

http://i.imgur.com/I6VbqXZ.jpg

this is as far as we got last time. but if we go just another mile: we will surface surrounded by grass, and trees, and the flyover that takes the cars to cities. buds that explode at the alightest touch. nettles that sting, but not too much. i've never been past this point. what lies ahead, i really could not say.

alightest, hmm

wickerman might be pulp's best song. certainly jarvis' best lyric. i don't think he's often a particularly great lyricist though

this is probably his best album lyrically though, because it's his most natural & offhanded conveyance of abject horror

"and he only did what he did, coz you looked like one of his kids"

This is the only Pulp album I've ever really bothered with. Always kind of liked them but not enough to become a proper fan, then I heard Wickerman on the radio one day and found it spellbinding.

'Bob Lind' was fucking robbed ... one of their finest tracks, that!

This album is classic as fuck. No way is 'The Trees' the best track on it, though...

You're right about Bob Lind in retrospect. Wickerman ftw obv

It's a tough call between 'Wickerman' and 'Sunrise', but there's so much gold on this album!

Yeah weird decision by them to do a Rush cover

You people voted for 'Trees'? What?

Yeah, exactly. I like it but it's far from the first track on this that screams out "highlight" to me.

Pulp were such a wonderful band, and the four records they put out from His 'n' Hers up to this are all absolute classics, IMO. I appreciate that by the time this album was released that Pulp had been a band for decades, but it still feels that they were just getting warmed up when they split. I miss 'em.

Roadkill is amazing right? Sunrise too i guess.

Yeah, 'Roadkill' is another favourite!

voting for The Birds in Your Garden" though i was very close to voting for "Bad Cover Version."

― Bee OK, Friday, September 4, 2009 6:03 PM (seven years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think this is still my Top 2, this album is fantastic. too bad they broke up because i think they left on such a high note.

I seem to be remember this album not doing very well at the time, but then the UK seemed to be going through a nu-metal phase at the time...

This is my favourite Pulp album

Love love love this album. "Wickerman" is probably my favorite Pulp song, and "Sunrise" lends itself to some very intense dancing tbh

Yeah, I remember Jarvis doing his trademark dancing during the outro when they play it on Jools Holland back in the day.

*played

Possibly my favourite Pulp LP still, Island really killed it with choosing The Trees and Bad Cover Version as singles, making terrible videos and running a promotional campaign along the lines of "Um, it's about nature or something, we haven't listened to it." In another world there would've been proper single campaigns for Sunrise / Minnie Timperly / Weeds, but apparently it wasn't to be. There is also a wealth of high-quality unreleased stuff from this era and it was the only Island LP that didn't get a deluxe edition, so no chance of hearing it.

and re: Wickerman - someone made a film with photos of all the locations, it's worth a look.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_rTKzB_7ak

The thing about Pulp splitting up is that I think if they had stayed together they would have been as big as ever in the mid '00s ... especially since Blur had gone on hiatus and Suede had broken up.

It doesn't bother me. They certainly left on a high

That's a great video mfktz - one of my absolute favourite Pulp songs too.

Its my fav also, but I think they were at that point of "Oh, its Pulp" where the next album would most likely have excited nobody in itself.

The 'greatest hits' got nowhere but that was more likely there were very few extras (one new track), where we'd got used to the extra live CD or the 'rarities' disc like from Blur, etc.

yeah and the man in the street had already bought all the Pulp records they were ever going to buy at that point.

quite.

If I remember, nu-metal was really popular when this album came out... it pretty much came out in that interim period where "indie" meant "guy with an acoustic guitar singing in a falsetto" and people were reacting to that by listening to Korn, Slipknot, Limp Bizkit and System of a Down.

By 2004 Franz Ferdinand, The Libertines, Bloc Party and the whole post-punk revival/next wave of Britpop thing was happening - it was already a different climate with a new generation of fans and one in which Pulp would have thrived, IMO.

The Strokes/White Stripes garage revival thing was just kicking off as well so yeah, it was very much a record out of time. I can't really think of anyone else mining a similar vein at the time. Maybe Doves? It all ties into that odd time for indie at the end of the '90s - think I tried to revive a Blur thread based on something imago said about things getting proggy/weird post-OKC and pre-Is This It.

Hmm. I kinda have Doves lumped in with early Muse, first album-era Coldplay and Travis circa The Man Who. Timeline-wise, rather than quality-wise.

At the time 1998-2002 felt like some sort of wilderness period for indie, but in hindsight it was actually quite fertile.

https://www.stereogum.com/2164740/pulp-we-love-life/reviews/the-anniversary/

20 years, wow! i'm going to play this tonight and see if my original votes still holds true.

I think i’ll never get over my love for his stage fingerpoints, i think it is the best, most effective fingerpoint ever.it’s indelible.

Sorry, not on point but somehow i saw a bunch of pulp live vids of late and yup.