Pulp – This Is Hardcore [2× Vinyl LP]

Pulp – This Is Hardcore [2× 180g Vinyl LP]

Details

• Format: 2× Vinyl LP, Album, Reissue, Gatefold, Stereo, Explicit
• Catalogue Number: 4786651
• Barcode: 602547866516
• Genre: Indie Rock / Britpop / Art Rock / Glam Rock
• Label: Island Records / UMC / Universal Music
• Originally Released: 30 March 1998
• Reissue Released: 18 June 2016
• Pressing: 180 Gram Vinyl
• Condition: New & Sealed

Description

This Is Hardcore is the sixth studio album by Pulp and, by widespread consensus, their masterpiece — the record on which Jarvis Cocker transformed the witty, voyeuristic pop intelligence of Different Class into something darker, more ambitious and more unsettling. Released on 30 March 1998 on Island Records, it followed the commercial and cultural phenomenon of Different Class (1995) and the Glastonbury headline slot of that same year — a set that had made Cocker the most recognisable figure in British indie pop — and deliberately refused to deliver anything the audience might have expected. The album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and earned Pulp a third consecutive Mercury Music Prize nomination. Rolling Stone declared it "arguably the first pop album devoted entirely to the subject of the long, slow fade," concluding that "in midlife oblivion, Pulp have found a strange kind of liberation." NME retrospectively described it as the record that "brought Britpop to a halt."

The circumstances of the album's creation were as significant as the music itself. Following the commercial peak of Different Class, guitarist and co-founder Russell Senior departed the band. Cocker left for New York alone to decompress and write in isolation, returning with a set of songs that drew on his age, his anxieties about fame, his complicated relationship with desire, and his sense that the decade's cultural moment was ending. The recordings ran from November 1996 to January 1998 at The Townhouse and Olympic Studios in London, with strings recorded at Whitfield Street Studio — a longer, more laboured process than any previous Pulp album, audible in the density and ambition of the arrangements. The production was handled by Chris Thomas — who had produced the Beatles' White Album, Roxy Music's Avalon, and the Sex Pistols' Never Mind the Bollocks — with programming by Magnus Fiennes and Olle Romo, string arrangements by Anne Dudley of Art of Noise, and additional piano from Dudley throughout. Track A5 embodies a sample of "Bolero on the Moon Rocks" written by Peter Thomas, recorded by The Peter Thomas Sound Orchester.

The individual tracks are among the most ambitious Pulp ever recorded. "The Fear" opens the album with Cocker's most precise statement of existential dread — built on an extraordinary eight-minute slow build that the band and Thomas refused to trim. "Help the Aged" — the lead single, released November 1997 and reaching number eight in the UK — is simultaneously Pulp at their most tender and most politically uncomfortable. The title track "This Is Hardcore" is a nine-minute meditation on pornography, performance and self-exposure that remains one of the most daring things a British pop band has committed to record. "A Little Soul" draws structurally on Smokey Robinson's "Tracks of My Tears" and is among Cocker's most openly autobiographical lyrics. "Seductive Barry" is a ten-minute late-night suite. "Glory Days" is a perfect pop single that was somehow never released as one. The four bonus tracks on Side D — including "Tomorrow Never Lies", "Laughing Boy", "The Professional" and the "This Is Hardcore (End of the Line Remix)" — are drawn from the Help the Aged and This Is Hardcore singles and represent some of the finest non-album Pulp material of the period. The album's cover was art directed by Peter Saville and American painter John Currin, whose figurative style transformed Horst Diekgerdes' photographs into something deliberately painterly and controversial.

This 2016 reissue on Island Records / UMC was mastered by Greg Moore at Finyl Tweek and pressed by MPO in France — the same plant that produced the highly regarded 1998 original — on 2× 180 gram black vinyl. Presented in a matt gatefold sleeve with custom printed inner sleeves. Made in the EU.

Tracklist

Side A

1. The Fear
2. Dishes
3. Party Hard
4. Help the Aged
5. This Is Hardcore

Side B

1. TV Movie
2. A Little Soul
3. I'm A Man
4. Seductive Barry

Side C

1. Sylvia
2. Glory Days
3. The Day After the Revolution

Side D

1. Tomorrow Never Lies
2. Laughing Boy
3. The Professional
4. This Is Hardcore (End of the Line Remix)

Credits

• Jarvis Cocker – Vocals, Guitar
• Candida Doyle – Keyboards
• Steve Mackey – Bass
• Nick Banks – Drums, Percussion
• Mark Webber – Guitar
• Chris Thomas – Producer
• Anne Dudley – String Arrangements, Piano
• Magnus Fiennes – Programming
• Olle Romo – Programming
• Neneh Cherry – Vocals
• Miri Ben-Ari – Violin
• Peter Saville – Art Direction
• John Currin – Art Direction
• Greg Moore – Mastering, Finyl Tweek
• Label – Island Records / UMC / Universal Music