Pulp

Different Class (Island ’95) Rating: A-
This band was around for quite some time (well over ten years) before finally making a splash, at least in the U.K., with His n' Hers (1994). In the U.S. this decidedly British band's profile is considerably lower; a cult following is about as strong a following as they're ever likely to get. Anyway, this excellent subsequent album is allegedly the band’s masterpiece (I personally have nothing else to compare it to), as group leader Jarvis Cocker (also famous for bum rushing Michael Jackson at the British Music Awards) arguably pens the best set of lyrics by any British songwriter since Ray Davies was writing about waterloo sunsets and village greens. The revenge of the nerds album opener “Mis-Shapes” is a superb demonstration of the band’s propulsively danceable and catchy synth pop side, which reaches its apex on “Common People,” a flat out brilliant pop single about a bored rich girl who want to slum it with the commoners. The song, which like "Mis-Shapes" features a great rhythmic surge, builds and builds as Cocker's disgust grows and grows (after all, "everybody hates a tourist, especially one who thinks it's all fun and games”), with the end result being a song that's sad, funny, mean, and epic all at once. “Disco 2000,” the album's other stellar hit single and album high point, is an alternately romantic, sad, and hilarious (“the boys all loved you but I was a mess, I had to watch them try and get you undressed”) look back at unrequited love. Elsewhere, songs such as “Pencil Skirt,” with its slinky Bowie-esque melody, “Underwear,” with its appealing keyboard-led melody, and the fascinatingly devious “I Spy,” which atmospherically brings to mind a more sinister Pet Shop Boys, all paint vivid portraits of disturbingly amoral characters and the circumstances that inevitably arise between untrustworthy lovers. “F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.,” easily the album's weakest song musically, details how love can unexpectedly change everything, while fate plays a role in the string-heavy ballad “Something Changed,” and “Live Bed Show,” another impressive ballad, provides a unique viewpoint about a faded romance. Meanwhile, “Sorted for E’s And Wizz” (about a trip to a rave), “Monday Morning” (great line: "why live in the world when you can live in your head?"), and “Bar Italia” (about the dreadful "morning after" a night out clubbing) detail the alternately disorienting and mundane existences of lonely drifters with no direction who are looking for a high; each song is elvated by Cocker’s typical lyrical precision. Granted, sometimes the band's new wave-y music isn’t up to the impeccable standards set by Cocker's inspired lyrical portraits, but more often than not it too holds up its end of the bargain (despite an occasional overreliance on borrowed melodies), resulting in an essential Britpop document that was one of the decade’s defining U.K. albums.

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