Pulp: His N Hers

His ‘N’ Hers (1994)

Best song: Pink Glove

Worst song: Someone Like the Moon

Grade: 5

When it comes to this album, I wish more than anything that I could go back and listen to it at the time it was released, judging it completely out of context. Because as it is, I can’t help but compare it to what came later. As good as much of this album is, most of the styles and elements here would then be improved on Different Class, making it difficult to truly judge the individual merits of this one.

That complaint out of the way, I actually enjoy most of it a lot. Jarvis Cocker’s lyrics are already pretty awesome, like on the biting imitation of an ambitionless thug that’s present in ‘Joyriders’ or the wonderful dream-related imagery in ‘Acrylic Afternoons’. But while most of the songs are very catchy, there isn’t one standout anthemic tune, and I also don’t find that the album has any kind of structure: a lot of the time it feels like the songs are arbitrarily placed, maybe by pulling names out of a hat.

For example, there’s a song halfway through, ‘Happy Endings’, that has the stereotypical bombastic feel of an album closer, with the swelling instruments and vocals and the empowering message Jarvis is trying to impart on the song’s subject, and I can’t help but think this would be perfectly placed as the second-to-last track on the album. It would feel like the culmination of all the songs to that point, but then when it was over, the real final song would start, reminding us that Pulp’s idea of relationships isn’t about happy endings at all. It’s far more seedy and shameful than that, it’s illicit affairs with the emphasis on sex rather than love.

That final song, ‘David’s Last Summer’, is the only track I feel is well placed, and it’s unique, without an equivalent on the next album. Most of the lyrics are spoken which creates an odd, effective feeling of separation between them and the music, except for the short choruses, which are sung, creating a rare harmony. It’s like the summer the lyrics talk about – nice, but far too short to last. And the title creeps me out, too. Why is it his last summer? What happens to him next?

It wasn’t easy to choose a ‘best song’ here as any of the singles and at least half of the album tracks could qualify, but eventually I went for ‘Pink Glove’ because it has the best hook out of all of them, it’s got a great ominous atmosphere, and the sheer emotion in Jarvis’ voice gets me every time.

‘His ‘N’ Hers’ is seriously overproduced, far too slick, every sound having gone through some sort of computer so none of it sounds quite real, and yet somehow, it works. Maybe it’s because everything the songs are about is so real. I know I’ve had relationships like these and some lines are so true they make me cringe. In short, this is an album full of contrasts, full of the unexpected.

(Also, I don’t know if other people have noticed this, but in ‘Babies’ there’s a line: ‘And she came round four/And she was with some kid called David’ – same David as the one in ‘David’s Last Summer’?)