Pulp are headlining Latitude alongside Paolo Nutini and George Ezra
By Mark Savage
BBC Music Correspondent
In animation, there’s a golden rule that characters should be recognisable by their silhouette alone.
It’s a principle that must have been familiar to whoever designed Pulp’s reunion tour – because Jarvis Cocker is constantly thrown into relief on the big screens at Latitude festival.
Britpop’s very own angle-poise lamp, his unorthodox dance moves are instantly recognisable, full of side lunges, sharp elbows and fluttering hands.
When his outline is beamed high above the crowd at Latitude festival, it’s like a giant, wondrous special effect. Who needs fireworks when Jarvis is here? (We get fireworks too, though that comes later).
Pulp come to Latitude in the middle of a summer-long reunion tour, 22 years after their last record, and a decade after they last played live.
“This is what we do for an encore,” the video screens announce before they take the stage. But if time has moved on, the songs sound remarkably fresh.
Disco 2000 is essentially a British Abba song, all suburban disappointment and thumping disco beats; Babies is a voyeur’s manifesto and Mis-shapes is the soundtrack to the revenge of the outcasts.
Those hits prompt mass sing-alongs – not just from the adults who saw them first time around, but from their kids as well.
Cocker, meanwhile, is just as dry and mischievous as ever. “Feeling ok? We’ll soon see about that,” he intones ominously as the show begins.
Image source, Getty Images
The band’s reunion tour culminates with two nights in London’s Hammersmith Apollo next week
But really, he’s in a party mood. The band have been soaking up the festival all day and before long he’s laughing at people who’ve stapled underwear to their flag poles, and throwing chocolates into the crowd. “My doctor’s here tonight so he wouldn’t agree with this,” he observes.
Cocker even tells the story of his girlfriend visiting one of the festival’s many stalls and trying on a dragon’s tail, “which I found strangely exciting, actually”.
There’s always been a curious innocence to his vice, which amount to things like glimpsing a bra strap (Underwear) or imagining the shape of someone’s breasts (F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.)
Even the provocatively-titled This Is Hardcore is really about the seedy parallels between the porn industry and the music business. Guess which one comes off worse?
Revisiting the songs, the band have never sounded better.
Spread across a grand Hollywood musical staircase, and augmented by the Elysium Collective sting section, they bring a new cinematic grandeur to Misfits, and a swirling, hypnotic energy to Do You Remember The First Time?
A poignant Something Changed is dedicated to bass guitarist Steve Mackey, who died earlier this year at the age of 56; and Sunrise, which Cocker performs in front of a dazzling, white-hot globe of lightbulbs, is a stirring end to the main set.
That said, some of the more obscure tracks don’t go down so well. Like A Friend, a rarity from the soundtrack to 1998’s Great Expectations, feels like a particularly odd choice for a festival set, especially when they omit the fan favourite Razzmatazz.
But the band know everyone’s waiting for one song in particular.
“Have we forgotten something?” asks Cocker, pretending the set has ended. “Haven’t we played David’s Last Summer?”
Then, with a nod and a wink, they rev up an extended, blood-quickening version of Common People.
If anything, the song’s scathing tale of poverty tourism has gained even more bite as it approaches 30, and the gap between rich and poor widens even further.
Cocker snarls his way through it, standing astride two monitors, his fist pumping the air as the crowd sing along, before it ends in a flurry of pyrotechnics and confetti.
As with Blur’s Wembley Stadium shows a fortnight ago, it’s a reminder that Britpop wasn’t all about beers and blokes. Some of the acts were simply in a Different Class.
Fizzing with fun
Pulp’s set came at the end of the first day of the Latitude Festival, held in the leafy grounds of Suffolk’s Henham Park.
Malian band Tinariwen were first on the bill, easing everyone into the festival vibe with a feast of traditional desert blues on the main stage.
Over in The Sunrise Arena, indie newcomers The Last Dinner Party were one of the day’s buzziest bands, drawing a huge audience despite only having two singles to their name.
“Christ there are a lot of you,” gasped singer Abigail Morris, before justifying everyone’s interest with a barrage of catchy, baroque pop anthems.
The six-piece switch from delicate beauty to righteous fury at the flip of a switch, and Morris is an eminently watchable front woman, punctuating every beat with a balletic swirl or a hair-flailing headbang.
They’ll graduate to a bigger stage before long.
Image source, Shutterstock
The family-friendly festival also has a kids’ area, circus performers, yoga classes and record-breaking bubble blowers
As the afternoon turned to evening, the main stage was handed over to a trio of left-field pop acts, with Georgia’s sun-kissed dance beats followed by Confidence Man’s high-camp electro pop; and Metronomy’s bouncy keyboard riffs.
The few festivalgoers who decided not to watch Pulp were treated to a raucously rowdy set from Yard Act on the BBC Sounds stage; while folk-pop supergroup Fizz gave fans an early glimpse of their debut album, The Secret To Life, at the Sunrise Arena.
Driven by the combined talents of Orla Gartland, Dodie, Greta Isaac and Martin Luke Brown, their infectiously joyous set left everyone with mile-wide smiles as they went into the night.
The festival continues on Saturday with Paolo Nutini, James and The Lightning Seeds on the main stage, with Young Fathers headlining the BBC Sounds stage.
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