Pulp Encore Documentary: Cocker's Reunion Reviewed — SkimNews
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- Pulp returned to touring in 2023 after a decade-long hiatus, playing two nights to 20,000 people at London's O2 Arena — gigs now documented in the film "What Do You Do for an Encore?"
- Jarvis Cocker wrote his mission statement to reach the top with a band in the back of an exercise book in 1978 at age 15 in a Sheffield comprehensive school classroom
- The documentary intercuts the arena concerts, backed by a 10-piece string section and most of the classic lineup, with autobiographical voiceover, archive footage and interviews with Cocker's mum and gran
- Pulp's first album in 24 years reached No 1 and provided the opening song, Spike Island, whose refrain "I was born to perform… I exist to do this" frames the reunion's emotional arc
- Cocker reflects on the irony of becoming a national treasure as the patron saint of outsiders, and on 90s footage suggesting that getting everything he'd dreamed of in youth was an "anticlimactic trauma" from which he has only recently recovered
- The two O2 concerts were Pulp's 566th and 567th live shows, and the review critiques the venue as too vast for the band's intimate energy, noting that the archival and bio-documentary segments land far better than the concert footage
Why it matters: After a decade off, Pulp sold out two 20,000-capacity O2 nights and landed a No 1 album — a striking commercial and emotional comeback for a band that built its identity as outsiders, reframing Cocker's lifelong outsider anthem around a new chapter of acceptance rather than rebellion.
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