Pulp unveil energetic new comeback single ‘Spike Island’

Posted On April 10, 2025April 10, 2025

Before Pulp played their new song, ‘Spike Island’ for the first time ever on the BBC, a fan wrote in to say that this would be the first Pulp track released in her lifetime but yet her excitement rivalled any of the other fans who had been there from the beginning. There is always a level of slight fear when an act as iconic as Pulp make a comeback, especially when they’re iconic for being a part of a distinct historical moment like the Britpop boom. But as the opening moments to ‘Spike Island’ boomed from radios worldwide for the first time, there wasn’t a single second left for anything other than pure excitement.

But even before that, the title is evocative. In 1990, The Stone Roses threw a historic concert dubbed ‘Spike Island’ in Widnes, Cheshire. Rose-tinted nostalgia remembers it as one of the greatest days in musical history and the opening party to one of its most hedonistic eras. I’m sure plenty would try and make the point that without that show, maybe the door to the 1990s wouldn’t have been kicked down hard enough for a band like Pulp or an album like their breakthrough moment ‘His ‘n’ Hers’ to work. But from the band’s perspective, with Mark Webber having been at that show, “It was a slight anti-climax, to be honest.”

Right as nostalgia for that era hits a new high again with the summer of Oasis’ reunion on the horizon, Pulp are back, and what they have in hand is a perfect follow-up to ‘Sorted for E’s & Wizz’, returning with their signature witty eye surveying the sights of the cultural landscape. 

But more so than that, whereas the 1995 track was all wit as a young Cocker meandered his way through a rave, ‘Spike Island’ dances around a powerful emotive core that grabs you in the second verse. “I took a breather, decided not to ruin my life,” he sings, but this time, it’s not about getting some water and having a mid-party sit down. There’s more here as Pulp seem to deal head-on with their hiatus, their thoughts on their own career and place in both the modern music world, in nostalgia and their decision to return. In the end, Cocker’s conclusion is simple, as the song’s emotional climax hears him sing, “I exist to do this.”

In the mind of the cynics, when they heard that Pulp were releasing new music, I’m sure a question popped into their boring brains: What’s the point? Pulp could go on forever playing the same live set, and people would be there in their droves for as long as the band wanted to do that. But as ‘Spike Island’ moves through its high-octane, deeply infectious energy, there is the answer. In the lyrics, in the instrumentation, but mostly in the band’s ability to still completely and utterly capture you, not in a way that’s nostalgic and reliant on an old legacy but in a true and pure way—that’s the point, why would anyone moan about new music as good as this?

As the final moments of the song deliver a big, joyous outro, I can already picture the scene: anyone who has been to see a Pulp show knows how the crowd moves. Jarvis Cocker gets everyone dancing as he is, as the song says, made for this. Throughout all of Pulp’s releases spanning decades, that energy that buzzed through everything is more than intact as the band return with their first new music since 2001, and it’s a track that could rival any anthem that came before.

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