Freaks

Pulp had changed significantly since their debut It. By this time, every member bar Jarvis had moved on but the addition of Russell Senior proved to be a pivotal turning point for the band.

No longer did Pulp sound pastoral or easy-natured; now they were darkly romantic, brooding, noisy, and a little bit Gothic, in the way young folk who brush their hair a certain way are always a little bit Gothic.

Pulp were out-of-tune with the times, but the times didn’t satisfy Pulp. The album is quite marvelous. Most of these songs stand the distance of time; it was here, possibly even more than 1992’s Separations, that Pulp started coming into their own as a band with a fully-realized aesthetic.

The first disc is the original album, unaltered and in its entirety. The second is a bonus disc comprising tracks from the two big non-album singles from the same era, ‘Little Girl (With Blue Eyes)’ and ‘Dogs are Everywhere’. Two further b-sides ‘Tunnel’ and ‘Manon’ complete the second disc for the definitive ‘Freaks’ period release.