Pulp
More 
(Rough Trade)
★★★★

NEARLY a quarter of a century after their last album, Sheffield’s Britpop icons Pulp are back. Though it’s perhaps not quite the surprise this epoch suggests – there have been two reunion tours in the intervening years.

I was initially unsure about lead single Spike Island but I’m happy to confirm More is rather good. For those yearning for the heady days of the mid-’90s there are plenty of call backs dotted across the set. Disco banger Got To Have Love being the most obvious, with now sexagenarian frontman Jarvis Cocker doing one of his seedy/intimate monologues before spelling out L-O-V-E.

Elsewhere, middle-aged angst creeps into many of the tracks, from the newly unattached Background Noise to Farmer’s Market’s uncertain excitement of early romance. I’ve only just realised how much Cocker sounds like David Bowie.

A very welcome return.

Van Morrison
Remembering Now 
(Virgin Music)
★★★★

AFTER far too many years of wrongheaded broadsides against government action during the pandemic and other perceived societal problems, and generally sub-standard albums, Remembering Now is a hugely exciting return to form from Van Morrison.

Set to turn 80 in the summer, the Northern Irish singer-songwriter has captured some of the mystical, romantic magic of his late ’80s career high releases, like Poetic Champions Compose and Avalon Sunset.

While most of the songs aren’t top drawer, there are many highlights, including the Belfast time-travelling Stomping Ground and the slow-burning, Brown Eyed Girl — quoting When The Rains Came. His extraordinary soulful voice is in great shape. Make sure you stick around for the astonishing closer Stretching Out, which does indeed stretch out, giving fans nine pulsating minutes of transcendent Van The Man incanting about “Shady Lane” — urgent, ruminative and searching.

Keith Jarrett
New Vienna
(ECM)
★★★

RELEASED to celebrate the 80th birthday of US piano virtuoso Keith Jarrett, New Vienna is the fourth album ECM have put out from his 2016 European solo tour.

The set is made up of relatively short pieces of improvisational playing. While the first track is dense and knotty, the rest of the music is often melodic and lyrical, peaking with parts IV and V. As usual, he closes with a cover of Somewhere Over The Rainbow.

With Jarrett forced into retirement following two strokes in 2018, it’s always good to hear music from his past live dates. However, surely I can’t be alone in thinking it starting to feel like overkill from this particular period of his career (why oh why isn’t ECM releasing any solo concerts from Jarrett’s extraordinary 1970s Golden Age?).

Very much one for Jarrett completists.