Pulp- This Is Hardcore (1998)

This is, perhaps, an eccentric first Pulp album to blog- their sixth, and coming right after the intelligently poppy double whammy of His 'n' Hers and Different Class. like Blur the previous year and Radiohead two years later, this is an example of a "Britpop" band (I'm personally quite ambivalent about that term, for reasons I'll come to in a future blog post) exploiting their popular success to make a fascinatingly interesting album which, while not crammed full of the catchy singles of the recent past, marks a step forward in singwriting.

This album is more of a compelling soundscape that a collection of catchy tunes, and I find myself playing it much more frequently than any of the band's more populist fare. It's their masterpiece, with the triumphantly epic title track at its centre but with the album as a whole sounding variously like Pavement, Public Image Ltd and Bowie during his Berlin period. It's a mercurial, interesting and compelling long player record, and far too good for people who just want popular singles.