Oh, this is a great record. Basically Pulp still have it, five years after winning those farcical Britpop wars, where Blur conceded and unexpectedly finally cracked it with that "Whoo-hoo" throwaway where indie music hall failed, and Oasis got guzumped on the post-Beatles front by the Super Furry Animals who've had the sense to be inspired and add their own twist, rather than just being slavishly derivative like the Brothers Gallagher, who should just go and fuck off back to the First Division of Boring Pub Rock a la their heroes from Maine Road. Err, sorry about that, I just felt like trashing Oasis again. Easy mark, I know.

Back to the Pulp review.

Oh, We Love Life is a great record. It's a lot more immediate than This Is Hardcore, with its share of great rock vignettes - "The Night that Minnie Timperly Died", more downtempo balladeering such as the amusingly poignant "Bad Cover Version", or "I Love Life" which starts out close and personal before turning up the crank factor. The meandering "Wickerman" is evocative in its talk of rivers, with all the metaphoric connections to life, with a faint sense of British, err, Gothic that the title taken from the horror movie might suggest. (Don't worry, it's not "Wuthering Heights".) We Love Life is definitely not a goth album, however, because even though the prevailing theme is one of mortality, the focus is as much about the life that precedes it. Whilst the melodramatics may have been tempered with a more slowburn feel, perhaps partly due of Scott Walker's input, Jarvis Cocker continues to expound forth on such diverse subjects as refugees, trees, and yes, suburbanite bootywhang (as in "The Birds In Your Garden", at times ranting forth like a podean Dave Graney. In the end, the overall sense of life and perhaps how not to live it that's marked many previous Pulp moments is still in full effect, but in a more abstract way. And the closer "Sunrise" is brilliant, recasting the punchline from "Sorted For E's And Wizz" as a redemption song, with a bursting coda to die for.