Live album and concert film from Pulp: Help the Old Man

Jarvis Cocker is Pulp – so far, so clear. Then how much pulp is in Jarvis Cocker? The concert film “Pulp – What do you do for an encore?” illuminates this mixed situation. Garth Jennings, British director of several feature films (such as "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy") and music videos (such as "Vampire Weekend", "R.E.M." and "Pulp"), has also staged the reunion concerts that the Sheffield band has been playing worldwide since 2023.

Jennings has been a pulp fan for a long time and, with his film, is paying tribute to the band, which was founded in 1978 by student Jarvis Cocker and retired in 2001. “It’s my love letter to the most wonderful band of all time, whose songs are just as meaningful today as they were when they were created,” he says like a fanboy.

In June 2025, Pulp gave two concerts in London on the occasion of their new album “More”, which was released after a 24-year break. Jennings filmed them and accompanied the recordings with archive material: interviews, TV appearances, snippets from previous concerts, fan surveys. Jarvis Cocker tells the band's story from offscreen, enriched with personal dontjes and lucid thoughts. Anyone who has ever heard Cocker's radio show "Sunday Service" on BBC 6 Music (reissued as "Someday Service"!) or experienced the solo evening "Sleepless Nights" (2016), in which Cocker was accompanied by a symphony orchestra at the Berlin Festival, knows that he is a gifted entertainer and at the same time a beguiling emcee.

“Pulp: What do you do for an encore?” Director: Garth Jennings, 99 minutes, GB 2026, available to stream on MUBI from September 25th

Pulp: “Live!” (Rough Trade/Beggars/Indigo)

In the film, too, after lifting the stage curtain, he whispers like an august: “This is a night you’ll remember until the end of your life”. Let's take a look. The sun rises, Jarvis emerges, the other band members in the red circle are cardboard mates, the real ones are already on stage and, supported by several string players and the newer band members, let the song “Spike Island” from the album “More” sound.

Jarvis Cocker walks down the show stairs, lights in the steps accompanying him. “I was born to perform, it’s a calling”. What we always knew. Jarvis only had to turn 60 before he was able to put this fact into words.

Old and new songs - there are 21 in total - are accompanied by appropriate animations, and huge screens to the right and left of the stage direct the attention to the musicians. The camera feels its way as if it were there by chance, frontal shots from the stage into the audience and vice versa. It seems surprisingly long-winded, but it's also pleasant because of the lack of rockist airs and reflects what distinguished Pulp from the Cool Britannia pipes back in the Britpop era: entertainment is possible without chauvinistic ladism.

There is a great temptation to quote Jarvis' stories 1:1, they are so succinct, nonchalant and self-ironic. But let's not do that here. Just this much: Cocker derives his early childhood desire to become a TV celebrity from his shortsightedness, drops the “Pulp Master Plan,” names his role models, tells how he caught the attention of BBC presenter John Peel and what that did to him. He then reveals the “Pulp aesthetic,” which always makes you think of his tweed jacket, and he thanks keyboardist Candida Doyle because her mere presence prevented Pulp from degenerating into a lad band. US R&B star Barry White showed Cocker what is important: “Make it look easy!”

The original band members Candida Doyle, Russell Senior, Mark Webber and Steve Mackey, who died in 2023, only speak later in historical interviews. The latter explains the focus on the singer as follows: Jarvis wrote and writes very personal lyrics. If he didn't feel comfortable with the music, he was unable to sing lyrics to it. This resulted in the attention pyramid.

In fact, the song lyrics still have enormous power, obviously also for their author: Jarvis Cocker not only recites the songs - it's impressive that the new ones already feel as immortal as the old ones - he performs them with every fiber of his still lanky body. Explicit hip swings, big show gestures, short breakdance moves included, but never exaggerated.

Let's put it this way: Garth Jennings' love letter is addressed to Jarvis, but he doesn't forget to send his warmest regards to the rest of the band, because without them Jarvis wouldn't be Pulp. Ultimately, it's so entertaining that we'd like another encore.

Until then, we are enjoying the recently released album “Pulp: Live!”, which was recorded on the two memorable evenings in London and follows the concert dramaturgy, although it has three fewer songs. Correctly it should be “Pulp & the 20,000: Live!” because people sing along here, and not just during the choruses, but throughout. The family atmosphere at the concerts was triggered by Cocker's warm speeches, of which unfortunately only very few made it onto the live album.

Therefore, here is one in memory of which he asked the audience in the Berlin concert in June 2026 before “Help the aged” to take the falsetto line “Funny how it all falls away” from him. Cocker proudly declared that, despite his age, he would still sing all the songs in the original key. But he couldn't grasp that one line anymore - he was just 31 when he first sang the song. So the audience helped the old man. “Pulp: Live!” makes it audible: Not only Jarvis and Pulp are Pulp, the fans are Pulp too.