Pulp in Brisbane: Common People and Timely Rain

Live Review — Pulp at the Riverstage, Brisbane

Tuesday, 24th February 2025

Words: Ben Preece

iPhone photos: Chris Searles

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Pulp have not played Brisbane since the sadly defunct Livid Festival in 1998 and one glance at the crowd filing into Riverstage tonight is evidence enough that the wait has not dulled affection. This is not casual attendance. This feels more like a rabid congregation. Shirts that have survived multiple share houses and house moves. Middle aged couples who once fondled each other under the mirror ball to ‘Disco 2000’ and related deeply to ‘Common People’ in their youth. The faithful, older now, sharper round the edges.

Some bands age into heritage acts. Others age into themselves. Pulp do the latter. There are undies and inflatable mirror balls on the merch stand. Not relics of nostalgia, but artefacts of continuity, of course. They have a new album, a rather good one actually and one of last year’s finest, appropriately titled ‘More’.

This is not a museum piece of a tour. It is called You Deserve More: Live 2026, which feels less like branding and more like a thesis statement. Not a victory lap. Not a heritage circuit. A reminder that the story is still being written, still stretching its limbs, still reaching for something beyond the mirror ball.

At Riverstage, beneath a thick Brisbane sky and the faint perfume of eucalyptus, they deliver a show that is less about reinvention and more about affirmation. These songs still fit. These stories still sting. And Jarvis still moves like a man conducting invisible electricity.

They open with ‘Sorted for E’s & Wizz’, that woozy comedown sermon, and the mood sets instantly: brittle nostalgia with a pulse. Behind them, a cluster of inflatable tube air dancers convulse into life, all flailing limbs and ecstatic geometry, moving with a windblown elegance not entirely unlike Cocker himself. It is absurd. It is perfect. It is very Pulp.

The unmistakable riff of ‘Disco 2000’ follows, ripping through the night and lifting the crowd airborne, grinning at its kitchen sink romanticism. If Britpop once feels like a youth movement, tonight it feels like a class reunion where everyone actually likes each other.

Jarvis Cocker remains the most compelling geography teacher you have ever met, sketching entire estates and inner lives with a flick of the wrist. The recent ‘Spike Island’ struts. ‘Razzmatazz’ snaps with wiry charm. ‘Slow Jam’ and ‘F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E.’ swell and sneer in equal measure, guitars alternately needling and engulfing the amphitheatre air.

The mid set stretch leans into mood. ‘Underwear’ is deliciously awkward. ‘Farmers Market’ breezes in with late career tenderness. ‘This Is Hardcore’ still slinks like a velvet curtain hiding something unspeakable. ‘Sunrise’ and ‘Something Changed’ provide that particular Pulp ache, romantic without naivety, observant without cruelty.

By the time ‘Do You Remember the First Time?’ and ‘Mis-Shapes’ land, Riverstage transforms into a gently pogoing sea of knowing smirks. ‘Babies’ is greeted like an old mate who still tells the same story but somehow lands it every time.

And then, of course, ‘Common People’.

Second from last. The tension winds tight. The riff lands. The crowd roars that immortal line about wanting to live like common people. And as if Brisbane itself is running soundcheck with the band, rain begins to fall. Not a storm. Not a downpour. Just enough. A cinematic drizzle that feels almost cued by the lighting desk.

Thousands of voices shout the chorus skyward while droplets catch the stage lights and turn the night briefly silver. For a song about class tourism and the fantasy of slumming it, the moment feels oddly egalitarian. Everyone equally damp. Everyone equally euphoric. It is accidental theatre at its finest.

They close with ‘A Sunset’, a softer comedown after the communal exorcism. No grand speeches. No pyrotechnic punctuation. Just a band comfortable in its skin, letting the songs do what they have always done: hold up a mirror and wink.

It is, in many ways, a standard Pulp show. The hits arrive. The deep cuts breathe. The frontman remains theatrically angular. But when the catalogue is this sharp, when the nine people on stage move like a single nervous system, when the storytelling still lands, and when the rain decides to join in on cue, standard feels extraordinary without a trace of aging irony.

SETLIST — LOOK AND LISTEN