Salient

An Album You Should Own If You Don’t Already

By Joel Cosgrove | 28 May, 2007

With Education Vice President Joel Cosgrove

Pulp - Different Class

Pretty much everyone I know can hum along the chorus of ‘Common People’, I’ve been to enough karaoke to know that it’s a gem. Fewer people know about the band who wrote that song (Pulp) or the album (Different Class) on which it features. Led by frontman Jarvis Cocker,these guys and girl were the ‘it’ band in Britain during the 90’s. Forget about Blur and Oasis. Pulp were the best band around.

Why? Well, one of the things I like in music is story-telling and Different Class is all about story telling. Hooking up with upper class rich kids, reminiscing about the popular girl you had a crush on at secondary school, perving on the next door neighbour, you can easily submerse yourself grubby reality of this album. The best however, comes with the biting social commentary. ‘Sorted For E’s & Whizz’ is Cocker’s critique of the illegal rave culture that wasslowly self-collapsing at the time. He opens with, “Is this the way they say the future’s meant to feel?/ Or just 20,000 people standingin a field?/ And I don’t quite understand just what this feeling is/But that’s okay cos we’re all sorted out for E’s and wiz”, a searing attack on the emptiness of the scene and drug culture in general.

Grab a copy of this album cause it’s one of those albums that although highly rated, has kind of disappeared off the radar. For an album with some pretty morbid themes, it’s a surprisingly hand pumping in the air record.