Pulp Album: “Hits”

You know you'd give it up for Jarvis Cocker. Without question. The way he can sneer right through a song while coasting on his smooth, white-soul voice inspires a host of dirty thoughts. Amazingly, this is a a 'best of' that manages to avoid glaring errors and ommissions. Don't even try not to shake yer hips to the first half of the album- songs such as 'Babies' and 'Common People' (the massive hit that pitted working class against upper crust with it's tale of a poor little rich girl) are laced with campy synths and have driving beats lifted straight from the Discoteque. And of course, it's all loaded with the kind of cheeky bantor that would make anyone but Jarvis blush. After all, how many bands could make you sympathize with a man who cheats on his girlfriend with her sister? As the pace slows the music segues into a series of slow-burn croons like the sentimental a "Little Soul," never losing the uniquely British character that Pulp refused to water down for marketability outside the Commonwealth.

Great sounding collection spanning 4 albums from this highly passionate UK band...the sort of release that makes one take notice for the uninitiated to go back to the original albums, since each was a real art statement, incorporating themes,artwork, all smacking of a sensibility found in artists such as Bowie and Roxy Music,where art and sound mesh into a collage of a total life experience.

Not a note wasted.

The intelligence behind the band, it's use of pop,cynicism,keyboards,rocking rhythms with it's lush bittersweet melancholia take on things smacks of a realism when music matters not only as a commercial vehicle but as a statement in all that UK tradition of lyrical intelligent bands in the vein of The Kinks, and The Jam and sound wise comparable to the experimentation in mood,attitude and melody found in bands like the 1960's West Coast Love,and Talking Heads.

One new unreleased track.

On this evidence, Pulp may be the so-called "Britpop" act that has best weathered the '90's. They've been able to subtly alter their sound without retreating into obtuse "experimentalism" while also avoiding the trap of becoming one's own cover band. Older tracks like 1993's fantastic "Babies" still sound fresh, and the tracks from 2001's neglected "We Love Life" are easily on a par with the band's best work. In a rarity for compilations, even the new track is good!

Despite sagging sales, Pulp is still very much on top of its game. Let's hope that their current hiatus is not permanent.

If you like music that is wildly innovative, danceable, lyrically fascinating and even funny, provocative, insanely structured, and just plain COOL, get this. Now.

If you like music that is kinda dirty, real and raw-sounding, full of spunk and character, full of energy, full of feeling, and sure to make you sing along, get this. Immediately.

If you like music that takes the best of the 1980s, the best of the 1990s, the best of modern dance music, and combines them all into something wholly original, get this. ASAP.

If you like music, if you like to rock out, if you long drives to amazing tunes, if you've ever meditated on the power of great music to change and improve your mood, get this right away.

Man, I just love this CD. I wrote an entire book while listening to it almost, cranking it as loud as it could go in my little basement office. Every song is solid. There is no filler here. Listen to this, but maybe don't listen to it around your kids: there are lots of innuendo-filled lyrics and breathy vocals, the sort of thing you maybe wouldn't play around your parents-in-law. (Depends on your inlaws, though, I suppose.)

Get this, get this, get this. It's a good place to start your obsession with this terrific band. PULP!

(Oh, and I'd just ignore the liner notes. They're kind of...I don't know. For starters, their comment, "10 years on an Island [Island Records]--not even Robinson Crusoe got that," isn't quite right. I think he was on his island for decades. That's petty, but the essay inside: ehh. Some reviewer's pointless rant about listening to them. Like this one here...but more pretentious.)

This could very well be the best greatest hits album ever, in the running with Leonard Cohen's first one and the Velvet Underground's--the sort of greatest hits album that makes a guy think he was too hasty in dismissing greatest hits albums as nothing more than marketing ploys.

Just get this. It is so, so, so good. If I ever had to defend the idea of music in a court of anti-music Nazis (whoa, I think I see a Broadway play here!) this would certain be among my first exhibits.

Some of the songs are fantastic and some of them... not so much. This dude likes to sing songs about doing the deed.