Pulp – His N’ Hers

Introduction

After the successful post about ‘Pulp – Different Class’, and it was a successful post, done it ages ago and it still gets looked at so I was doing something right, also because I think it is one of the best albums and I think it’s the one most quizzed about because I think a lot of people have listened too. Anyway, after that post I got a comment mentioning to me that I should listen to the ‘His n’ Hers’ album, obviously I listened to some of the songs already but I hadn’t listened to it in it’s entirety. Which I think the least it deserves after listening to it. I already listened to the songs ‘Lipgloss’, ‘Babies’, and ‘Do you remember the first time’, so I knew what I was going to get, I was going to get classic Pulp, classic Jarvis Cocker lyrics. ‘Lipgloss’ was the first single to come out of this album,

The album came out in 1994 just before the album that got them noticed ‘Different Class’ in 1995, and the album was produced by Ed Buller who also produced ‘Suede – coming up’ and one of my favorite bands ‘The  Courteeners’ on their second album ‘Falcon’. the album was released on the label ‘Polydor’.

Having already listened to ‘Different Class’, I felt like I might get an underdeveloped version of that, I can’t believe how stupid I was thinking that.

The Album

The album kicks off with a classic ‘Joyriders’, a very catchy song sprinkled with some classic Jarvis Cocker lines such as: –

“We can’t help it, we’re so thick we can’t think,
Can’t think of anything but shit, sleep and drink.
Oh, and we like women;
“Up the women” we say,
And if we get lucky,
We might even meet some one day.”

I think it’s a really good opening to the song because it’s not to heavy, bit like ‘Different Class’, starting with ‘Miss-hapes’, I’ve tried to learn this on guitar, it’s quite easy it’s just that I found it quite hard to sing with because you’ve got quite a lot of chord changes in there. I think the song is basically talking about chavs driving round looking for something to do. I think my favorite line in the whole song, possibly the whole album ‘Hey you, you in the jesus sandals!’. I don’t think anyone else could get away with that.

The album have many of these songs, catchy songs with funny lyrics which only Pulp could do so well, these songs being ‘Lipgloss’, ‘Babies’, ‘do you remember’. A song that really sticks out in my mind when I think of this album is ‘Have you seen her lately’, which has those funny lyrics but also maintains to be quite scary and horrifying, which you hear quite a lot of on the album ‘This is hardcore’. Cocker’s vocals on this song are really impressive, and to be honest it is throughout the whole album.

Another favorite on the album for me is ‘Happy Endings’, with Cocker shouting “And I know no-one can ever know which way to head
But don’t you remember that you once said that you liked happy endings? “, even though I think it was intended, but I think this song is quite deep.

Overall 9.0

I think this is a very fine piece of work by Pulp,and personally I think it’s better than ‘Different Class’, yes that album has the likes of ‘Common People’, ‘Disco 2000’ and ‘ Sorted for E’s and Wizz’ but I feel that a lot of the public like these songs, and that takes away from those songs slightly. Whereas ‘Happy Endings’ isn’t as publicly adored like those, which means more, feels more personal and special. I still have to review ‘This is Hardcore’, and it will be done in time. Just need more time. Let me know what you think.