Customer Reviews

This Is Hardcore + Like a Friend

5 star:		(61)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Pulp's This Is Hardcore is a hard album, but not in musical sounds. The band's front man, Jarvis Cocker, gets at his hardcore inner feelings. The album has a dark and somber tone with most of the songs dealing with his getting older and the carefree days of his youth slowly slipping away. Songs like "The Fear", "Help The Aged", "A Little Soul" and "I'm A Man" all deal with aging while songs like "Glory Days', "The Day After The Revolution", "Party Hard" and "Like A Friend" longingly look back at fond memories. The album has a subtle power and the band employs a lot a synth and strings that cast a dark shadow over the songs. This Is Hardcore is an album that challenges you, makes you think and makes you feel.

It's a pity that Pulp's lead singer is mostly known in the US as the guy who knocked over Michael Jackson and then waved his backside during an awards ceremony in the mid-90s. Jarvis Cocker manages to write bizarrely appealing lyrics, and fronts a band that really deserves to have more Stateside exposure.

THIS IS HARDCORE is, despite its name, a fairly mellow album in places, with many of the songs having a wistful, nostalgic feel to them. The band has moved on (again) from their previous sound, but all the tracks still retain that essential quality that makes them recognizably Pulp. The music somehow manages to sound cheap and throwaway, while able to retain a tough core.

The omnipresent keyboards and synthesizers of previous Pulp albums are back again, though I think they are somewhat more restrained than usual. There's a section in the middle of the CD of mostly guitar-based and straight piano music that seemed much more mainstream, although there are still some eerie sounding effects running through the tracks. "TV Movie" is a sad comparison of a broken relationship to a badly produced made-for-TV film. (It sounds sillier than it is. Cocker's lyrics alternate between hilarity and sentimentality masterfully.) "A Little Soul" is a frankly bizarre song where Jarvis sings to his fictional son about how he really wasn't a terribly good father and makes a brief, frightening mention of what things he used to practice every night with the kid's mother. I can't think of too many people who could get away with this, but Cocker does it with a wink and a smirk.

Pulp prove that they still know how to make some fast danceable music when they want to. "Party Hard" has a strong rhythm, while "The Fear" and "This Is Hardcore" feature some great bass guitar work. The music is fairly catchy overall; there are many tracks that I hum to myself for days after listening.

The US version of THIS IS HARDCORE features a bonus track not included on the UK release: "Like a Friend". This interrupts the fine conclusion that was brought by "The Day After The Revolution". But it is a fun song, so its inclusion is welcome. The album as a whole will probably appeal to those people out there who like quirky, offbeat music. It's not different enough from the mainstream to freak out anyone weaned on US radio, but it is just that little bit off to be quite appealing.

How do you follow the multi-platinum selling, perfect pop of Different Class? Well, you can wave bye bye to that gold disc and release your darkest collection of songs to date. That's exactly what Pulp did with This is Hardcore. It may have been considered a commercial "flop" by some insiders, but their loss was very much our gain. This is Hardcore is undoubtedly Pulp's finest collection of songs. It's depressing, funny, sad, despondent and uncomfortable to listen to if you are approaching that difficult age of 33. This is a moody, almost sleazy album in places and it's all the better for it. Different Class had an instant appeal to it, but I quickly lost interest.Two years on, Hardcore is still essential listening. That's the biggest compliment you can give to any album, if you still play and treasure it months after the hype has faded. It took a few listens for me to fully appreciate this album, but it soons hit you. Practically every listener will identify with the opening track The Fear. A tale of missed opportunities and panic attacks when everything goes horribly wrong. It all rings so true, and Jarvis knows it. Helped of course by the fine melody, the album touches on many fears but you sort of laff because Jarvis delivers his lyrics like some stand-up comedian. Other highlights include Helped The Aged and the title track which is aided along the way by strings Diva Anne Dudley. Hypnotic and seductive and quite simply brilliant. The track Dishes will make you chuckle whilst TV Movie and A Little Soul will scare you slightly. I never thought that Pulp would release a finer album than His N Hers, but Hardcore is in a class of it's own.

Pulp's swansong is its finest album, and its most consistent.

Though being "consistent" does have a down side; this album doesn't have the standout songs of some of the earlier ones, like "Common People", "Es and Whiz", sugary little pop tunes that snuggle their way into your mind then bite you with the acid lyrics... Instead we have an album that is good all the way through, with a coherent "orchestral" sound that gives it that dark but luscious feel, where most of the earlier albums were damaged a little by being too eclectic; clever as hell but a bit "bitty". I listen to this straight through, where with most of the earlier albums I want to play particular tracks first, and skip others entirely.

Not that this album isn't clever; the lyrics could be his best ever, the tunes are as good though mostly darker, and the band has never played so well. But Jarvis has (ahem) matured a little; not just because he's writing about getting old and being afraid, which aren't your usual Britpop topics, but because he's writing and singing with more feeling and less irony.

The album starts incredibly strongly with four stunning tracks out of five: "Fear", "Dishes", [_Party Hard_ is good but not quite as good as its surrounding tracks], "Help the Aged", "This is Hardcore"...

Other particularly great tracks (to me) are the soul section: "A Little Soul" and "Seductive Barry": and yeah, the irony creeps back in for the Barry White tribute/parody, but it's a great track anyway... "Glory Days" is a return to sincerity, and a great climax to the album.

Which is why it's a pity that the album has one more track, "The Day After the Revolution", which tells a similar story to the Who's "Won't Get Fooled Again", with better lyrics, as you'd expect, but much less musically memorable. Me, I'd have reversed the order to go out in a blaze of "Glory Days". But if that's the only real complaint I have about this album, then we're not in much trouble, are we?

A great album, and a keeper.

Cheers!

Laon

Perhaps the most unexpectedly honest of Pulp's canon, This Is Hardcore is a very, very strange record. It lacks the ephemeral but undeniable charm of the undeniable and loudly POP first two Island records, but adds a far deeper layer to the early '90s incarnations of Jarvis Cocker's lustful moanings. Pulp present, then, without any of that sickly prog pretense, a concept album that must be the antithesis of Sgt Pepper - it's about aging, an odd little subject for a man who's only thirty-five years old. Nonetheless he tackles it, thankfully, with his most brutally ironic observations yet. The crux of it all comes on this record's weakest track, an irony Cocker may very well appreciate. "Party Hard" is vintage Bowie glam-rawk, but contains a lovely, evocative line in a song about the middle-aged pushing themselves to exhaustion just to fit in with the younger generation. "Why do we have to half kill ourselves just to feel more alive?" is Cocker's plaint. The opener, "The Fear", admits shortly after Cocker's cheeky boast about producing "our 'Music From a Bachelor's Den'" that you're "gonna like it...but not a lot." Naah. He's understating the point. "Dishes" features a lovely violin refrain, as well as his subtle jab at the greater music community (the endlessly quotable AND quoted "I am not Jesus, though I have the same initials.") The standouts from then on are "Help the Aged", the swaggering shoegazer of an orchestral title track, and the daresay amusing but distressingly dark Barry White referencing "Seductive Barry" (featuring the lustful moanings of not just Cocker, but Neneh Cherry of all people!).

Most of the record is oppressively nihilistic and dark - by no means a bad thing, as it gives the cutting observations their hurt. It is only when Cocker, the dazzlingly talented combination of Candida Doyle (keys) and Mark Webber (guitars, sometimes sounding not unlike early Jonny Greenwood), and the most audible rhythm section of Nick Banks and Steve Mackey try to add a little levity that this record starts to sag. On their own, the remaining tracks "Sylvia" (a lovely McCartney-by-way-of-The Bends-stadium rocker), "Glory Days" (distressingly close to the breakthrough "Common People" but boasting a more avant-garde arrangement) and "The Day After The Revolution" (Cocker's snide, harsh dictum of modern hedonism) are superb examples of all that is Pulp. Unfortunately they do not belong at the end of an album that begins with this amount of introspective insight.

In a strange little way, This Is Hardcore's concept drains out along with its focus. It's a brilliant album and an exciting EP, sitting next to each other rather uncomfortably on the same vinyl slab. The lack of cohesion is distressingly evident. It seems that Pulp, aware that their darker stylings hadn't exactly clicked with their fans (witness the failure of the Freaks LP), decided to brighten things up a bit in a way that seems...well...forced. Unfortunately the lack of faith in their fans and an over-reaching eagerness to please has been detrimental to their final acheivement.

Buy all means, do purhcase this album. It is Pulp's best, but also their most distressingly miscellaneous.

(Most versions, including the one sold here, are packaged with the superb b-side "Like a Friend", famously appearing in the 1996 film version of Great Expectations. It shows up in the "portait scene" [ahem] and this may very well make Jarvis and fans alike smirk but the song itself is excellent).

At the same time a shaggable genius and a skinny loser, Jarvis Cocker frontman and lyrics writer for Pulp is truly inspiring, one of the last REAL ROCK STARS offered to us by the XXth century. Yet Pulp is now dormant and a bit forgotten, what a pity ! Surfing on the Cool Britania wave of the mid 90's the Sheffield band that had started on the independent circuit in the 80's makes itself noticed and provides Britain's underdogs with a voice. and what a voice !!! breathy, sexy, deep or fragile, Cocker knows how to use his organ, and even takes you very close to musical orgasm. Delightfully pervert but also touchingly sincere and simple the lyrics are just wonderful and served by surprising tunes.
This is Hardcore is the 3rd "commercial" album of the band and was written at a point when Cocker was trying to get himself together, after as he himself put it "getting as hammered as possible". Yet, contrary to Oasis's Be Here Now which musicaly suffered from drug and alcohol abuses, Pulp's This is Hardcore is their best album. Suffering is sometimes source of greatness and Cocker sure knows how to sublimate his angst into breathtaking songs.
Opening with The Fear (the best song ever written on depression) sets a dark mood, but also a sophisticated and demanding quality. It's not because he is depressed that he gets sloppy! But the mood lightens up a bit with track 2: Dishes, in which Pulp displays its simple musical talent and which lyrics are pure Jarvis humour, singing "I'm not Jesus Christ though I share the same initials..." proving a modesty unknown to most rock stars. This is Hardcore is off course the absolute highlight of the album, a drifting number that pulses like blood in your veins. The absolute beauty of the production on this song proves that the band has reached maturity. The following, TV movie, is yet another simple piece with touching lyrics, but Cocker never really let's himself fall into stupid pathos and the self derision and critical stance he takes on himself is reffreshing as ever. Other great songs on the album are Party Hard, a more upbeat song, a bit more agressive and something u can definitely dance to. The album like a therapy finally lets us hear signs of hope with Glory Days, a great reflexion on the common victories of life, but don't worry nothing to existencial.
This is Hardcore is an absolute must have for anyone who loves rock. It is stylish, honnest, moving, even arousing (a great specialty of Jarv); yet for all it's sassy sophistication it stays true to the band's origins and to the common people feel. Working class Britain, we love you !!!

I definitely recommend to listen to Different Class as well, released before TIH it is the album Pulp will be remmembered for and is characteristic of the sound and mood of the band. Together these 2 albums form a magnificent diptic of genius. Essential.

"This Is Hardcore" is a slightly darker and seedier, yet more vulnerable sequel to the social observations and issues of fury, frustration and desire addressed on "Different Class". Indeed, the bitterness and rage felt on "Different Class" seems to have given way to a kind of sadness on "This Is Hardcore". After the success and the brilliance of "Different Class", whatever album followed was bound to be compared to it, but "This Is Hardcore" sounds a little more "grown-up" than "Different Class" in a way, for if "Different Class" was the soundtrack to a life from age 16 to 29, then "This Is Hardcore" feels more for life at age 30 and over. The lyrics are still as ingenious as those on "Different Class", but with less humour and more sentiment. "A Little Soul", "Dishes" and "Sylvia" are almost tragically touching. "Party Hard" sounds like a Bowie track from his late 70's "Eno-produced" album period, with Jarvis Cocker even sounding vaguely like Bowie on the song. My favourite songs on the album are "I'm A Man" and "The Day After The Revolution" which has a strange kind of "bittersweet" air of finality to it without being sickly, like a happy ending to a particularly tense film where everything turns out okay. The only track I'm not too keen on is "Seductive Barry". It just moves too slow and lacks any real hook. Overall though, another really great album from Pulp and enjoyable to listen to both on it's own and back to back with "Different Class".

Despite the coverphoto this CD is a masterpiece. It mixes instant hits like "Help The Aged", "The Fear", the title song and "Sylvia" with songs that are excellent but maybe not made for MTV like "Dishes" and "TV-movie". Pulp's done the unthinkable: a follow-up to "Different Class" that's just as good, and maybe even better...

Having bought this album over a year ago, it is hard to sum it up in a short review. But to say the least, it is a worthy follow-up to "Different Class", the closest to a perfect album I have ever heard.

With the alleged "Death" of Britpop, this change in style could not have come at a better time. Having been around the block more than a few times, they know how to experiment with different styles without making fools of themselves. It takes a few listens to really get into the album. For people who loved "Different Class", "This is Hardcore" is different, but ultimately a satisfying album.

The first five tracks are more lavish and dark, while the album livens up towards the end, with songs like "Silvia", "Glory Days", and "I Am a Man", which is more like the Pulp of the "Different Class" days.

"Different Class" was their defining moment, and "This is Hardcore" definitely continues to showcase their unique and brilliant sense of style. A truely great achievment.

This is Hardcore is quite simply a great album. There is no question at all in my mind that it is the finest album of the year and one of the best of the decade.

The music shimmers with such sublime brilliance that the results are always beautiful and elegant. Pulp have never been like other band's. Different Class was a great album that, with the Great Escape, Parklife, Morning Glory, the Bends and I Should Coco summed up the entire Britpop movement.

This is Hardcore is better than their predecessor. It steps into far darker territory which, I believe, may have seemed off putting to some fans and critics. For those who could handle the music, they were treated to an hour of wonderful, unique music unlike anything you can get from crap American bands.

Help the Aged, the first single, tackles a subject that has never been dealt with in rock before. The fear of growing old. It's anthemic chorus and it's lyrics of pitty make it a strange yet satisfying first single.

This is Hardcore, the best song on here, is a long drawn out, depressing, porno drenched rock opera. Absolutely beautiful with it's sly horns and string sections.

Other winners include A Little Soul, TV Movie, Like a Friend (not available of uk version), dishes, the Fear and one of the best rockers I'm a Man.

If you don't have this album you must buy it. No self respecting music fan cannot have this album. You must listen to it over and over and each time you will discover some more hidden beauty, it is not a commercial album that can be thrown on for you to dance to. It is a disturbing, decadent album that sounds great when you're laying in bed at night thinking. Critics and fans were put off at first but the album is now being acknowledged for what it truly is. A rock masterpiece. Wonderful stuff.

The Best of 1998

1. This is Hardcore 2. The Good Will Out 3. Six 4. This is My Truth... 5. Tin Planet 6. Bring it On 7. Navy Blues 8. International Velvet