Stegzy's Music Project

A commentary on Stegzy's album collection

Jun 21

Hits – Pulp [#588]

by stegzy

Pulp_HitsJarvis Cocker and Sheffield’s finest with an hour and twenty minutes of lyrics illustrating gritty northern GenX premillennial social situations.  How times have changed. Yet Pulp is still powerfully relevant and reflective of youthful experiences.

This is the band’s final (at time of press) Greatest Hits compilation and features all the familiar Pulp tunes. I obtained the album having spent years avoiding Cocker’s band like the plague due to the band’s seemingly undue popularity amongst my peers. However, having reflected on how the band’s music seemed to pop up in film soundtracks that I liked I gave them a go by trying their Greatest Hits album. My opinion remains the same, but whenever I feel a little less northern, I give the album a listen and immediately feel all gritty post-industrial.

2002 best of compilations Indie Pulp

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Apr 22

Great Expectations (Original Soundtrack) – Various Artists [#549]

by stegzy

Great Expectations Soundtrack Like the goth genre, I came to this film late. Had I come to the film back in the time it was released, my outlook on life may have changed subtly.

Following a childhood meeting with a menacing Robert De Niro, Ethan Hawke falls for Gwyneth Paltrow, and, thanks to a mysterious benefactor becomes a successful artist in New York. Lots of painting and nookie ensues.

As well as being an awesome adaptation of a thought provoking classic piece of literature, the soundtrack is also well presented with songs by contemporary bands such as Mono, Pulp, Reef  and Poe, coupled with contemporary artists such as Scott Weiland, Tori Amos, Duncan Sheik and Chris Cornell. All compiled deliciously in an angsty way.

In a pre-Twilight late 1990s, this movie was instrument in the blossoming of many a youth emerging from the fiction of a post teenage world into adulthood. Much in the same way that the BBC’s nineties soaparama This Life did. Sadly I was too busy with work and other life distractions to notice but as soon as I did, I was out buying the Soundtrack and waiting for the DVD of the film to drop in price.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1S5ZVjN3J4

1998 compilations Mono (UK) Pulp Soundtracks

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Aug 6

Different Class – Pulp [#370]

by stegzy

 

Northern folk rock referencing the experiences of a generation now approaching middle age.

Different Class  is the album which most people identify with the band. Gritty cutting social commentary enhanced by Cocker’s unique singing style. Many of the tracks appear on a variety of soundtracks of the time.

Even though I lived in Sheffield at the height of their popularity and I met Jarvis when he popped into the Halfords I worked in, at the time I didn’t like them, but persistent gnawing at my ears and gradual realisation of the talent behind the music arose to change that perception and sentiment.

Pulp

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Oct 3

#152 – The Best Anthems in the World…Ever – Various Artists

by stegzy

The Best Anthems in the World...Ever - Various ArtistsThe Best Anthems in the World…Ever – Various Artists

This compilation does for Indie and the noughties what The Best Air Guitar Album in the World did for rock. Here we find songs and bands from the late nineties and early noughties which became the soundtrack to New Labour Britain.

Some of the artists, Chumbawumba for example, are one hit wonders while others such as Blur and Reef stride the boundaries of indie and rock like Duran Duran and Simple Minds connect us to the eighties.

However, after the first 10 songs or so we enter into forgettable tracks. It’s almost as if the compiler has struggled to fill the 41 track compilation with similarly rememberable songsmiths. Still, it’s good car music, for those long journeys where arguments over what should be played are rife.

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best of Pulp Various Artists

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