Pulp got together back in 1978. Frontman Jarvis Cocker was 15. He's now 38. Yes, that's a damn long time to be in a band, but surprisingly, the group's only original member wears it well. Having withstood 23 years and an indeterminable number of line-up changes, you'd think that Pulp would long since have started repeating themselves. But if there's anything these Yorkshire gents are not, it's stale. In fact, it's possible that on We Love Life, they're fresher than ever. Part of the reason for this is that they've always embraced change, constantly pushing in new directions.

Jarvis Cocker is still speaking up for the outsiders and freaks of the world, and the overt sexuality that's always informed his delivery is still a presence, but its context has changed completely. Cocker's worldview has moved to an alternate plane since the libidinous come-ons of Different Class (perhaps their last album, the ultra-dark masterstroke This Is Hardcore, excised all of those urges). Now, Cocker and the band seem to have grown into their station in life, the misfits stuck in the middle of the limelight.

Pulp worked with the legendary British producer Chris Thomas (who has produced everyone from the Sex Pistols to Roxy Music to John Cale, as well as playing session keyboard on the Beatles' White Album) for both 1995's Different Class and This Is Hardcore. And they attempted to work with him again on We Love Life, but with the sessions half-finished, the band decided to scrap the tapes and start over. They quickly decided on another British legend: songwriter Scott Walker, a man known for his seedy song topics and baroque instrumentation. This switch in producers, having changed nearly everything about the band's sound, is immediately evident.

We Love Life marches in with "Weeds" on top of Nick Banks' militaristic snare drum and unexpected layers of acoustic guitars. For his part, Cocker essentially addresses the double standards that exist in our lives, driving especially hard at the image-conscious upper class who "still come around to visit us when [they] fancy booze and drugs."

This segues seamlessly into the trip-hoppish groove of "Weeds II (The Origin of the Species)," over which Cocker delivers one of his trademark spoken monologues. Over a strangely EQ'd bassline, he deals in metaphors wherein the common folk are the weeds of society. "Weeds must be kept under control or they will destroy everything in their path," he sneers. That's not an idle observation, either; it's delivered like genuine threat to some abstract authority figure. The groove pauses to emphasize the point, evaporating briefly into an ambient ether before the band picks back up.

The album's other spoken track is even better, revolving around a recounting of a visit to the spot where a river has been diverted under a city. Somehow, Cocker manages to conjure all of the dirt and grit of the littered sidewalks and faltering buildings without ever directly referencing them. His personal changes are evident here, as well. In 1995, he wrote to his boyhood crush, "Let's all meet up in the year 2000/ Won't it be strange when we're all fully grown?" Now that the year has come and gone, he seems resigned to the fact that he can never meet up with his lost loves or salvage the past. Rather, he has to content himself with visiting the dam where they met, fantasizing about taking a trip down the river, beneath the city and the people living in it.

Elsewhere, we're treated to some of the best traditional songs that Pulp have ever written, in "The Trees" and "Bad Cover Version." A brilliant string ostinato anchors the groove of "The Trees," in which Cocker laments a lost love, similarly coming to terms with the fact that trying to get it back just isn't a possibility. "Might as well go and tell it to the trees," he sings, and it's at this point that you first realize that he seems to be seeking real emotional commitment far removed from the lascivious sportfucking that his older songs favored.

"Bad Cover Version" addresses roughly the same theme from a different angle, with Cocker smirkingly comparing his ex's new boyfriend to himself, offering that "a bad cover version of love is not the real thing." The band's sense of humor enters the fray in the coda, and they even get in a jab at their own producer, likening "the second side of Til the Band Comes In" (Walker's fifth solo album) to an off-brand box of cornflakes and sugar substitutes. Other targets include "the Stones since the 80s," the "Planet of the Apes" TV show, and the late-period "Tom & Jerry" episodes where they could talk.

This is followed by "Roadkill," an acoustic reflection on a trip to the airport to pick up the other half of a doomed relationship. The narrator catches sight of a deer dying in the road, and in retrospect, takes it as a sign that the relationship was doomed to begin with. From this emotional low point, though, comes the phoenix of "Sunrise," the album's stirring closer and one of the most optimistic songs Pulp have ever recorded. "I used to hate the sun/ Because it shone on everything I had done," begins Cocker, ultimately summing up the band's entire career: "You've been awake all night/ So why should you crash out at dawn?" Pulp's long night may be over, but the day looks just as promising.

On their seventh album, Pulp have pulled off yet another remarkable reinvention of their sound and outlook, while simultaneously making their most organic album since their full-length debut, It, was released almost two decades ago. The cheap synths that made their last few albums so delightfully sleazy are almost completely absent, replaced by Mark Webber's well-developed guitar melodies and a more peripheral role for the electronics. And that's all good, because the last thing I'd want is for Pulp to get stale on me. On this evidence, it seems likely that they'll stay fresh well into the new century.

-Joe Tangari, December 13th, 2001