The great lost Pulp album... (His 'n' Hers - Pulp)

Member Name: dandelionburdock

Product:	His 'n' Hers - Pulp
Date:	14/07/01 (66 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: great singles, classic pulp choruses, premier league indie!

Disadvantages: couple of ropey tracks, why no his 'n' hers?

Pulp's first studio album on a major label runs Different Class and This Is Hardcore very close in the race to be the definitive Pulp record. Not perfect by any means, but stuffed to the over-starched collars with some of the best material they've ever done.

First thing that hits me going back to it is just how good a compilation of Pulp's best songs could be - imagine a side one of Joyriders, Lipgloss, Have You Seen Her Lately?, Babies, She's A Lady, Do You Remember The First Time...all classic stuff. A couple of the more racy (nay, filthy) tracks in hindsight aren't quite as good as I remember them (Acrylic Afternoons and Pink Glove), while the much-lauded "Pulp do 'The Winner Takes It All'" of Happy Endings sounds like Jarvis on a bad lyric-writing day - "And the orchestra begins to make a sound/That goes round and round and round and round/And round and round again..." - not an Ivor Novello winner, that one, and perhaps the real reason the inlay bore the plea "please don't read the lyrics while listening to the music".

Back to the classic tunes though - Joyriders is a great opener, with some great lines "Hey you - you in the Jesus sandals/Would you like to come over and watch some vandals/Smashing up someone's home?" I particularly like the way the song ends - one of those songs where one band member at a time stops playing until Jarvis is left to breathily enunciate the last syllable.

On the singles front, Lipgloss, Do You Remember The First Time? and the re-released Babies are all absolutely wonderful. I've always particularly liked ...First Time, which has the best chorus of any Pulp song ever. Key line for me is "We've changed so much since then/Oh yeah we've grown" which is typically playful double-meaning from that dirty sod Cocker. Live, the song is simply outstanding, and can get a festival crowd bouncing like few others can. I
9;ve also got real affection for She's A Lady, a throbbing beast tune with great paper thin vocals from Jarvis which I really regret never having seen live.

All well and good so far then. However, the one real disappointment about His 'N' Hers is that arguably one of the best tracks they've ever written - ironically the song which gave the album its title - was relegated to track 4 on The Sisters EP. I can't help feeling that booting Someone Like The Moon or David's Last Summer (the two fairly underwhelming and somewhat average tracks that bring the LP to a close) to accommodate it would have really made people look further than Parklife and Definitely Maybe in 1994 and really take notice. Thankfully, the benefit of hindsight allows us to see that they didn't have to wait too long for their turn in the spotlight...

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