Twenty-four years since their last studio album, Pulp returned with the kind of swagger that suggests they never really left. ‘Spike Island’, the lead single from their album More, arrived as both a statement of intent and a love letter to the moments that shape us.
2025 will be remembered as the year legacy acts reclaimed their cultural relevance. From Oasis announcing their long-awaited reunion to The Cure delivering their first album in 16 years, the music landscape witnessed a remarkable wave of returns.
Yet amongst this resurgence, Pulp’s ‘Spike Island’ stands out not merely as nostalgia but as proof that great bands can evolve whilst honouring their past.
As we close out the year, this track epitomises what made 2025’s comebacks feel vital rather than cynical, artists returning with something genuine to say.
Released on 10 April 2025 through Rough Trade Records, the track marks the Sheffield outfit’s first new material in over a decade and the band’s first studio music release since 2013, and the first album without late bassist Steve Mackey.
It feels like stepping into a time machine that’s been carefully calibrated to transport you somewhere between 1995’s Different Class and a future that’s still being written.
The Sound: Disco Pulse Meets Post-Punk Strut
Producer James Ford has crafted something genuinely special here. The track opens with a high-pitched whistle and cymbal count-in before erupting into a glorious disco bassline that pulses with the kind of urgency that defined the best of ’90s Britpop.
Alongside contemporaries like Oasis, Pulp helped define an era. That sliding guitar line, which one fan aptly compared to Bowie’s ‘Heroes’, glides above everything else with an almost narcotic shimmer.
The instrumentation sits somewhere between indie rock and post-punk revival, with hints of Talking Heads counter-rhythmic sensibility woven throughout.
There’s a cowbell punctuating the groove, synths that recall the sticky Europop excesses of His ‘n’ Hers, and a drum pattern that locks you in from the first bar.
Mark Webber’s guitar work deserves particular praise; the sliding electric lines create a sense of perpetual motion whilst maintaining a dreamy, ethereal quality.
What’s most striking is how the production walks a tightrope between nostalgia and innovation.
This isn’t a band attempting to recreate their glory days; rather, they’re synthesising their past with a sharper, more stripped-back aesthetic that speaks to 2025’s musical landscape.
Ford, known for his [masterful production work with Arctic Monkeys, brings that same calculated restraint to Pulp’s return.
The orchestra-style keyboards add a cinematic sweep without overwhelming the core groove, and Jarvis Cocker’s voice, defying the passage of time, still brims with that sharp charisma that largely defined the ’90s.
The Lyrics: Redemption Through Self-Awareness
Lyrically, ‘Spike Island’ functions as both confessional and celebration. The title references the legendary 1990 Stone Roses concert at a disused chemical plant in Widnes, an event that Cocker never attended but absorbed through cultural osmosis.
Yet the song transcends mere music history homage; it’s about the pull of transformative moments and the courage required to turn back from disaster.
The opening verse sets the tone: “Something stopped me dead in my tracks / I was headed for disaster and then I turned back.”
There’s vulnerability here, a willingness to admit that sometimes our best decisions are last-minute course corrections.
The pre-chorus introduces a fascinating tension: “It’s a guess, no idea / It’s a feeling / Not a voice in my head / Just a feeling.”
Cocker’s acknowledging the mysterious, intuitive nature of self-preservation, the way we sometimes know things without knowing how we know them.
The second verse deepens the introspection: “Not a shaman or a showman, ashamed I was selling the rights / I took a breather and decided not to ruin my life.”
This feels like a direct reference to the band’s early 2000s disbandment and Cocker’s subsequent discomfort with fame.
There’s shame here, yes, but also acceptance. He was “conforming to a cosmic design” and “playing to type” until he chose to walk back to “the garden of earthly delights” – a biblical image suggesting both creative rediscovery and sensory reawakening.
The repeated refrain “Spike Island come alive” functions as both spell and summoning, a portal to remembered glory and future possibility.
And that crucial line, “This time I’ll get it right,” carries the weight of second chances and hard-won wisdom.
It’s the sound of someone who’s been through the machinery of the music industry and emerged with their soul intact.
Cocker’s trademark observational wit still cuts through: “I was wrestling with a coat hanger, can you guess who won? / The universe shrugged, shrugged then moved on.”
It’s a perfect encapsulation of life’s minor catastrophes and cosmic indifference, delivered with that characteristic blend of self-deprecation and existential acceptance.
Later, he proclaims: “I was born to perform / I exist to do this, shouting and pointing,” a knowing wink to his iconic stage presence whilst also affirming his purpose.
The bridge introduces a philosophical note: “No one will ever understand it / And no one will ever have the last word / Because it’s not something you could ever say.” Some truths, Cocker suggests, exist beyond language, residing only in feeling and experience.
The Video: AI as Time Machine
The accompanying music video deserves mention for its audacious use of AI technology. Cocker took cardboard cutout images from Different Class-era photography and animated them using a text-to-video model, creating something that sits between nostalgia and uncanny valley.
Whilst some listeners found it distracting, there’s something fitting about using AI to explore memory and transformation – themes that run through the song itself.
It’s Pulp engaging with contemporary technology whilst maintaining their artistic vision, even if the execution proves divisive.
Cultural Context and Reception
The track topped the UK Physical Singles chart and reached number 26 on the Billboard Adult Alternative Airplay chart, marking Pulp’s first appearance on any US radio airplay chart.
More significantly, it was met with critical acclaim across the board, with publications like The Guardian and NME praising the band’s ability to return without sounding derivative, balancing nostalgia with forward momentum.
However, ‘Spike Island’ feels too experimental to be mere nostalgia, too rooted in their classic indie sound to be a wholesale reinvention.
It’s the work of musicians who’ve lived enough to know that sometimes the best way forward is to honour where you’ve been whilst refusing to be defined by it.
The Verdict
‘Spike Island’ succeeds precisely because it doesn’t try too hard to recapture past glories. Instead, it acknowledges them whilst pushing into new territory.
The disco-inflected groove gives the track an immediacy that contemporary indie often lacks, blending the genre’s historical DIY ethos with danceable accessibility, whilst Cocker’s lyrics offer the kind of emotional intelligence that comes only with age and experience.
Is it ‘Common People’? No, and it shouldn’t be. ‘Common People’ was a moment captured in amber, a perfect snapshot of mid-’90s class consciousness and Britpop’s cultural peak.
It’s something potentially more valuable: proof that a band can evolve whilst maintaining their essential identity.
The production feels fresh without chasing trends, the lyrics cut deep without descending into self-pity, and the overall effect is one of genuine renewal rather than cynical reunion.
As the lead single from More, which debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart in June, ‘Spike Island’ set the tone for an album that proved legacy acts can still create vital, forward-thinking work.
Looking back across 2025’s wave of comebacks, Pulp stand apart, not as nostalgic relics trading on past glories, but as vital, relevant artists with something meaningful to say about redemption, self-discovery, and the courage required to keep creating.
Sometimes the universe does more than shrug. Sometimes it welcomes you back with open arms.
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