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— Tim Southwell
When I first came to South Korea I started to develop an interest in local films. From the clever rom-com 엽기적인 그녀 (My Sassy Girl) to the absurd drunken low-budget road movie 낮술 (Daytime Drinking), I found that was I able to learn a great deal about Korean culture while also enjoying some excellent pictures led by an outstanding generation of actors, including Sol Kyung-gu, Jeon Do-yeon, Moon So-ri, Song Kang-ho, Kim Hye-su and Hwang Jung-min.
But I didn't care for every picture I saw. Films which depicted massacres committed by Korea's authoritarian regime (화려한 휴가, aka May 18) and fictional accounts of natural disasters (해운대, aka Tidal Wave) ended up being undermined by unnecessary and insulting comic relief characters. 미녀는 괴로워 (aka 200 Pounds Beauty) couldn't have been clumsier in taking on body positivity. 실미도 (Silmido, they couldn't be bothered coming up with a pointless English title of its own) told the fascinating tale of convicts who had secretly been trained to invade North Korea in the early-seventies but the film suffered due to a manipulative ending in which viewers were expected to cry over the deaths of a bunch of vile thugs and rapists.
Many Koreans I have spoken to about appreciating their films have been impressed that I've seen so many of their pictures. They don't take my criticisms very well though. A common response to me knocking Silmido or Tidal Wave is that "[I] don't understand Korean culture". (Strangely this ignorance has never prevented me from enjoying their many good films but this point is never acknowledged for some reason) Apparently, cracking jokes in the midst of a tragedy or feeling that I ought to get emotional over despicable turds being killed are things I'll never understand because I am an outsider. Well, good.
Which brings me to the subject of today's blog post, Pulp. I used to be quite the Anglophile back in my teen years and considering what this space is all about perhaps I still am. British pop, British comedy, British chocolate, British girls, British towns: sign me up! But this doesn't mean I can appreciate it all. I've always been fond of Coronation Street (something that I must get from my mum, a longtime Corrie fan) but I've never thought much of other English soaps. Bands like The Who and The Police have never done much for me, barring the odd moment here and there, And don't get me started on blackcurrent juice!
Dislike of Pulp appears to be a bridge too far, however. Jarvis Cocker is a national treasure for being stick insect thin while still somehow being considered sexy and he's good in interviews and on panel shows. Plus, that whole thing with Michael Jackson. Who wouldn't love this guy? He even has resilience going for him since his band had been active since 1978 but wouldn't hit it big for sixteen long years. I understand the love he gets, I just don't think much of him as a singer even if I can totally see what everyone sees in him as a frontperson for his band. As a singer, he's like a louche Nick Cave without the range or a country and western singer attempting to send up a series of corny old numbers with an eyebrow knowingly raised to the crowd. As subtle as stubbing your toe on the edge of the bed. If that's not bad enough, there's his highly irritating habit of talking in the middle of their songs. ("Common People" may well be one of the greatest singles of all time but it's ruined by that dreadful "Are you sure...?")
The group's famously long gestation period could be seen as the UK not being ready for them but instead it was Pulp not being ready for stardom. 1991 and '92 is about where Cocker and mates Russell Senior, Candida Doyle, the late Steve McKay and Nick Banks start to look and sound like pop stars even if hardly anyone was listening. They had gone through many changes in lineup and style (in the early days they were said to have been a mix of "ABBA and The Fall") which leads me to wonder if some of Cocker's real passions had to be weeded out in order for them to belatedly break through. Leonard Cohen, for one, is frequently acknowledged as an influence on their early work but you'd never know it by the time the nineties rolled around.
Even at their best ("Do You Remember the First Time?", "Disco 2000"...I'm struggling to think of a third), it's hard to escape the feeling that a little Pulp goes a long way. Getting through an entire album is no easy task. It isn't so much that they're a bad group because they clearly have a lot going for them; rather, they're pretentious and they're over-studied in their presentation. In the promo for "Babies" Russell Senior glances at the camera as though he's Ron Mael giving viewers the evil eye. There's nothing original about these people. If they didn't exist, we wouldn't need to invent Pulp though it would be really easy to do so.
Nothing original about these people. Fans of Pulp tend to focus on Cocker and those of us who are not as impressed are no better but I think the band as a whole deserves to be knocked while we're at it. Doyle's keyboard flourishes bring to my sunshine indie pop like the Lightning Seeds without the delight. Senior's playing fails to wow the listener the way the likes of Johnny Marr, John Squire, Graham Coxon and Bernard Butler managed to do so effortlessly. Their ensemble playing is tight — just as it bloody well ought to have been considering how long they'd been around — but it isn't enough to save "Babies" from being bland indie fare that couldn't hope for a sniff of the Top 40 (until the finally hit it big a couple years' later).
Pulp will be coming up in this space at least two more times before long. Until then, I had better find more to say on the matter of trashing perhaps the most overrated British band of all time. I don't want to blow my load. But I imagine I'll find a way of continuing pick from the low hanging fruit of a group that ought to have been great but for all the ways they managed to balls it up. And if you don't care for my thoughts on Pulp then remember: I'm not British and I couldn't possibly understand them anyway.
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Also Reviewed This Fortnight
The Orb: "Assassin"
While Enigma and Deep Forest got lumped in with yuppie new age music, The Orb remained cool (this never prevented them all from appearing together on the excellent Pure Moods compilation). Honestly, you can have them. I like my blissed out music to be high on pop hooks the way those annoyingly earnest Euro acts did so effortlessly. The Orb never quite managed to do so, although it's quite possible they weren't striving for it in the first place. Brian Eno, Codona, Moby: there's plenty of great new age music out there that doesn't have to be tuned out every time its put on. "Assassin" isn't one of them: it's probably for the best that you focus on washing the dishes or reading a pop mag or doing your biology revisions or whatever while it's on; there's not much to be gained from listening to the damn thing.
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