On This Is Hardcore, Pulp make it clear they have outgrown Britpop and belong right up there with Ray Davies and Costello and Morrissey, those who look at England with a satirist's eye and a balladeer's heart. Which is 'This Is Hardcore' all over - a record that details bleak, black psychological decay while quoting Paul Daniels, a record that charts ever decreasing circles, while remaining mindful that such was the title of a 1984 sit-com starring Richard Briers. It could also be argued that the way that 'This Is Hardcore' takes on limelight aesthetics amounts to a powerful pop-art aes­thetic.

Pulp - This Is Hardcore - (Vinyl LP) | Rough Trade Pulp - This Is Hardcore - (Vinyl LP) | Rough Trade

Advertising posters showing the album's cover that appeared on the London Underground system were defaced by graffiti artists with slogans like "This Offends Women" [9] and "This is Sexist" or "This is Demeaning". I’m disappointed this one doesn’t include the Bar Italia clip and the locked groove, but happy with the sound. irony is over" it seems likely that, when the dust settles, this is an album that will seem possessed of just a little too much ironic detach­ment - in the music at least. Maybe it's nature's way of telling us human beings are not supposed to be world famous millionaires, sexually beloved by a quarter of a billion.Rolling Stone noted that This is Hardcore was "less bright and bouncy" than its era-defining predecessor, but praised it as being "even more daring and fully realized", noting that "it plays like a movie, a series of scenes from a life", and declared that it "is arguably the first pop album devoted entirely to the subject of the long, slow fade", which it heralded as "a bold move because it breaks one of rock's oldest songwriting taboos".

PULP - This Is Hardcore – Vinyl Exchange PULP - This Is Hardcore – Vinyl Exchange

This Is Hardcore is haunted by disappointments and fear — by the realization that what you dreamed of may not be what you really wanted. For a start, Pulp songs almost always contain, somewhere within them, at least a snatch of melody that makes you melt. The other Jarvis characteristic that explains why people like rather than worship him, is that he is funny — a quality most musicians possess only unwittingly.Take your seats then for Twilight Express, the story of a man plotting the desperate limits of his own exis­tence, consumed by porn and left shaken by intimations of his own mortality. You've been set up for the Duran Duran meets Bryan Ferry rampage of " Party Hard", the amphetamine anxiety when you're too high and too horny just to get your coat and go home alone, the self-disgust that screams: "Why do we have to half kill ourselves just to prove we're alive" Well, because at the end of this party is " Help The Aged" and nobody wants to go there, right? A bit sad that about 10 minutes has been cut away from The Day After The Revolution (I always loved the "bye-bye" at the end of the original), but all the bonus tracks are good and worth having (this was really one of the best PULP sessions imo). Released in March 1998, it came three years after their breakthrough album, Different Class, and was eagerly anticipated. All lyrics are written by Jarvis Cocker; all music is composed by Cocker, Nick Banks, Candida Doyle, Steve Mackey and Mark Webber, except where noted No.

Pulp - This Is Hardcore - Black Vinyl - Boiler Room Records Pulp - This Is Hardcore - Black Vinyl - Boiler Room Records

In an article entitled, "How Pulp's This Is Hardcore Brought Britpop To A Halt", Horton maintained that it was "a sloughing-off of fame’s skin, a rejection of the Britpop monster".This Is Hardcore' is a Pulp LP as you know one only in as much as it's a concept LP about life and the weirdness of everything. While the bonus tracks on side 4 are good, I'd much rather have the regular album spread out over 4 sides to help even out the sound quality.