Cocker Conspiracies
Ian Harrison enjoys Pulp's long, strange journey on LP.
Top of the class: (from left) Senior, Doyle, Cocker, Mackey and Banks, 1996.
IT
★★
(Red Rhino, 1983)
Produced by future Mission guitar hairy Simon Hinkler, young crooner Cocker’s seven-song debut set naïve and sincere ruminations on love to melodious, acoustic soft-pop with flutes, cello and the quietest drums. While not the finished article, Blue Girls, My Lighthouse and Wishful Thinking have charm and ambivalence to echo what the Marine Girls were up to at the same time.
Incongruous trad jazz caper Love Love encapsulates 20-year-old Jarvis’s amorous dilemma: “Is it just the idea that I like, or is it for real?”