We Love Life by Pulp

We Love Life, Pulp's seventh album, came out on Island on 22 October 2001, and after the long, dark night of This Is Hardcore it sounds like a band throwing the windows open. Written and recorded in the wake of those fraught sessions, it lost original producer Chris Thomas, who had made their two previous records, and gained singer-songwriter Scott Walker, who steered the band toward something looser and more natural.

Jarvis Cocker is still the sharp-eyed narrator of ordinary British lives, but the arrangements breathe now, giving room to Candida Doyle's keyboards, Mark Webber's guitars, Nick Banks' drums and Steve Mackey's bass instead of burying them in dread. It reached number six in the UK, and then Pulp went quiet: this was their last album for more than two decades, until More arrived in 2025, and the last studio record with Mackey, who died in 2023.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.