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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A classic album whose recording will go down in history!, August 24, 2002
In England, Pulp is known as the little band that could. After more than a decade of hard work & obscurity, they finally caught the public's attention with 1992's SEPARATIONS, coming at the start of the Britpop explosion Pulp helped gave birth to. Their subsequent albums were shining examples of the trend, but with leader Jarvis Cocker's highly original & biting lyrics to counter the infectious melodies. While bands like Oasis & the Verve relished in the excess that success brought them (and subsequently imploded), Jarvis wasn't impressed by it all, as albums like 1998's extremely dark THIS IS HARDCORE proved.That album was an all-around stunner & one that following up would seem like a challenge. It sure turned out to be, for WE LOVE LIFE had originally been recorded (and almost completed) with producer Chris Thomas, famous for his work with artists like Elton John. At the last minute, Jarvis wasn't happy with the result & immediately returned to the studio to start from scratch. This time, the man in the producer's chair would be American-born British cult icon Scott Walker. As it turned out, Jarvis' change of heart was warranted, as WE LOVE LIFE manages to overtake even HARDCORE's genius & with a much lighter mood. At first, the marriage between Jarvis' literate lyrics & Scott's Phil Spector-inspired production techniques would seem like an odd one, but as I kept hearing in the year after WE LOVE LIFE's European release, it worked surprisingly well. As songs like the 8-minute epic "Wickerman" prove, it sure did. The near-whispered vocals & alternately lush & dissonant music make for a spellbinding listening experience. I can just imagine Scott Walker's distinctive baritone singing a song like this. But a title like WE LOVE LIFE indicates a much brighter affair than THIS IS HARDCORE & in some ways it is, with Scott's expansive production giving the songs room to move & definitely easier to listen to. The near-title track "I Love Life" is one that could have been released back in Britpop's heyday & easily become a hit & is the most obvious example of Jarvis' mellowing out without dulling his edge. "Bob Lind" (remember him from "Elusive Butterfly"?) has Jarvis regaining his dark humor for a song that looks at a musician long after his heyday has passed. Hopefully, Jarvis isn't prediciting his own fate, for I believe he still has a lot to say. On the other hand, songs like "Bad Cover Version" (which even features a subtle dig at Scott Walker himself!), "The Night That Minnie Temperley Died" & "Roadkill" are some of the most downbeat & shocking lyrics Jarvis has ever written, proving that the production may be bright, but the words can still darken. While Jarvis still has some bones to pick in his lyrics, WE LOVE LIFE has hints of him finding some sense of peace, as evidenced by the nature theme of some songs. "Weeds", "Weeds II", "The Trees", "The Birds In Your Garden" (an actual love song!) & "Sunrise" have Jarvis seeing both the comfort & uncertainty nature & civilization bring. Again, Scott Walker's production is enough to warrant equal billing on the cover, but it doesn't result in Pulp simply singing on a Scott Walker album. WE LOVE LIFE's recording history is certainly a twisted one, but that doesn't compare to its releasing. It came out in Europe in October of 2001, but nothing planned for an American release. I first heard in April of 2002, but then it kept being pushed back a month (distribution problems, I believe) & I wondered if it would ever come out in the U.S. at all. Well, it's here finally & I must say it's every bit of a tour de force. For a band that's been around for as long as Pulp has (more than 2 decades), such a classic would seem unlikely that late in their career. Yet it's worked for both Pulp & Scott Walker, who really ought to come out of the darkness & record more often. Scott has had an influence on singers like David Bowie, Nick Cave & even Jarvis Cocker himself, so let's hope an album like WE LOVE LIFE will help alert people not just to Pulp's talents, but Scott's as well & maybe even result in some recognition in his own right. There's no better time for it than now.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The new PULP sensation, August 23, 2002
Beginning with a dash of introspective, pretentious and introvert albums
(It, Freaks, Separations), delivering the explosion of their pure
Pop soul on His'n'Hers and the brilliant Different Class,
passing through sofisticated, pompous and dark-decadent expressionism of This is Hardcore,
'Jarvis Cocker and his guys' have recently bloomed into their ripening opera: We Love Life.
This 12 songs collection is a clear demonstration of the great pop music
writing and playing ability of the band from Sheffield: a simply outlined instrumental carpet
and the direct words of Cockers
perfectly capture a mood of consciousness about their new vision of life.
No more twisted between the research of an astonishing arrangement of sounds and breathtaking
lyric sceneries, which absolutely made their effect and mean in the past years,
We Love Life represents the culmination of PULP's excellent Pop career: caught, as usual,
between their 'sex painted' souls (always recalled by Cocker's wry and marvellous lyrics)
and the agening process of their music sensibility. The Album starts with Weeds, a modern and for more sensitive and careful listener
version of Mis-shapes, that pounds on the Jarvis frequent anguish about the British classes
differentiations.
Then Jarvis starts singing his way....
With The Night That Minnie Timperly Died, that will likely become a single
and whose subject is clearly disclosed by the title,
Cocker begins his vocal trills that make PULP music so different and weird:
Oh, Minnie I can feel the pain. Oh, Minnie I can feel the pain, pain, pain, pain.
...And the Album unfolds hits core with The Trees, Wickerman, I Love Life,
Birds In Your Garden, Bob Lind and Bad Cover Version:
the pieces that will probably mostly remain in the fans minds.
In none of these songs PULP seem to be aggressive against the listener, with a new way to
face the musical and Lyrics contents: a softener one, a simplier one and more communicative
one. With Jarvis hanging onto his vocal ability to share with everyone who's
listening his new maturity, his new personal redemption.
Roadkill and Sunrise close the album, a kind of sweet and fair closing scenery to the ones
who saw the highlights minutes before. Maybe the album never take off, but once you've listened you've acquired
the new PULP sensation: new ways, new reasons to Love Life...wiping away the
'hollow feeling' of past times.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pulp's best CD, January 1, 2003
This is the CD that is going to confound and confuse quite a bit of Pulp's core audience (see some of the reviews already attached here), but this is Jarvis Cocker & Company at their finest. Sure, the trustfund slackers who didn't realize that "Common People" was making fun of them are probably not gonna get this, but (with the band getting the heave-ho from Island) if this is their final statement, it is a truly grand and staggering one from Pulp.The first thing you notice: this is a guitar record. Mostly gone are the gurgling synths and disco beats of DIFFERENT CLASS and HIS 'N' HERS. Gone also is the dense electronic murk of HARDCORE. Richard Hawley's guitar comes up front and center in most of these songs. Secondly--this is the record where Jarvis Cocker finally embraces the frequently invoked image of him by the press as "The New Ray Davies". The social commentary in songs like "Weeds" and "Wickerman", the storytelling of "Minnie Timperley"...these are lyrical concerns that pick up where VILLAGE GREEN PRESERVATION SOCIETY and ARTHUR left off. Thirdly--for a band that has historically written insanely memorable hooks, Pulp do a neat trick by burying them here. To be sure, the hooks *are* there, but it'll take three listens to figure out that the reason "Weeds" or "Bob Lind" is going through your head all day is that cool guitar lick that Hawley plays on those songs...or, you suddenly hear the way the string section swells and carries "Bad Cover Version" to the same gorgeous heights this band only visited in the past on a song like "Something Changed". These songs are amazing, beautifully subtle, sneaking up on you and then crushing the happy places in your mind like a ton of bricks. Finally--the three songs that end the album proper ("Bad Cover Version", "Roadkill", and "Sunrise" end the record, although both bonus tracks that follow on the US version are top-notch, too) are the three best closing tracks in recent rock and roll history. "BCV" boasts some of the most funny and incisively hurtful lyrics Cocker's ever written, marries them to one of his finest melodies, and sounds like a hit beamed in from some alternate, more wistful dimension. Following that, the quietly intense "Roadkill" is goose-bump inducingly beautiful, the kind of timeless song that Cocker's producer/hero Scott Walker would have loved to have written. Finally, "Sunrise" closes the album with a cathartic blast of guitar, strings, and chorus that revs up and goes over the cliff not once, but twice, in one of the most brilliant musical displays of this or any year. An utterly fantastic record, this edged ahead of Spoon's KILL THE MOONLIGHT and Wilco's YHF to top my favorites of 2002 list.
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