In " Acrylic Afternoons" Jarvis inoffensively gets from "On a pink quilted eiderdown / I wanna pull your knickers down" to "Just another cup of tea, please / Oh yes, thank you. There are brooding verses, monolithic choruses. The phrase "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah" is used to devastating effect. Opening with the startling Suede piss-take (I think) of " Joy Riders" - "Hey, you, in the Jesus sandals / Come over and watch some vandals" - "His 'N' Hers" is bolstered by three beautifully crafted singles in " Lipgloss", " Babies" and " Do You Remember The First Time?". He's brilliant throughout, strutting that fine line between parody and profundity with relish. You can see the fingertip flourishes, the hip wiggles, with your eyes shut. He's all over this record like Joel Grey in "Cabaret", like Marc Almond in Soft Cell, like Billy Liar testifying. Even when Jarvis isn't narrating he's going "doo duh doo" or breathing heavily with the arch angst of it all. Ed Buller choreographs a parade of fairground noises, European art-movie soundtracks, tacky pop, deliberately near-miss epic grandeur - all subservient to Jarvis' complex narratives of voyeurism and wish fulfilment. Pulp see this, after years of false starts and fallow middles, as their first proper album, and yes it has that sense of stature, that pride in itself as an event. Though even to mention a kitchen sink with relation to Pulp is to start thinking of metaphors concerning "Fatal Attraction" - style shagging atop one, dishes dishevelled. And if their sonic cathedral is more a wurlitzer in a leisure centre, so much the better for gritty realism and kitchen-sink drama. With Jarvis panting and whinnying and neighing, a visionary showbiz clown hamming it up to deflect attention from his intensely distressing insights into love's futility, Pulp possess the perfect pulpit-basher. And there's a lot of comedy in that.Ĭlearly, then - if you follow me - Pulp are Best British Pop Group of 1994. Also, Pulp allow comedy, which, being alert and sussed, is not sexy either. By exposing and highlighting the follies farcical flaws of the sex "act", by forcing you to chuckle at its ridiculous shape and ghastly consequences (Pulp may get momentarily aroused, but then they start thinking about used condoms and - worse still - pushchairs), they render their aura even less "sexy" than, say, the doyenne of signifiers over sensuality, Madonna. What they are not - and this is commonly misperceived - is sexy. Pulp are clever, knowing, ritzy and chintzy, and tremendously entertaining. If all post-modernism is camp, Pulp are as ironic as a row of tents. Chris Roberts in Melody Maker, 9th April 1994: