Pulp's hologram envy: how Abba Voyage helped birth a concert film
Jarvis Cocker and director Garth Jennings on turning a chart-topping comeback gig into a documentary hybrid - and why nobody's getting rich off nostalgia alone.
A comeback nobody was sure would land
Pulp: What Do You Do for an Encore? arrives with a genuinely notable hook: it was filmed at London’s O2 Arena on the night in 2025 that More, the band’s first album in 24 years, hit No 1. That’s a real commercial data point, not spin - a band that split in 2002, reunited briefly in 2011-13, and then came back again in 2022 has managed a chart-topping record in middle age, which is rarer than the nostalgia-circuit norm suggests.
Jarvis Cocker admits he nearly didn’t say yes to this second reunion. Having treated the 2011-13 tour as a deliberately “happy ending” - patching things up with estranged guitarist Russell Senior, playing the shows, then quietly retiring - he worried a second go would look like spoiling that story, or worse, that nobody would turn up. It took a promoter’s reassurance, apparently based on anecdotal sing-alongs before other bands’ sets, to talk him round. That’s a useful reminder of how much of the reunion economy runs on gut feeling and promoter confidence rather than hard data before tickets go on sale.
Concert film, but make it Abba Voyage
The film itself - directed by Garth Jennings, who made two Pulp videos in the late 1990s and later directed Son of Rambow and the Sing franchise - began life as a straightforward concert document before ambition crept in. Both Cocker and Jennings cite Abba Voyage, the hologram-and-live-band spectacle, as direct inspiration for blending performance with narrative. The resulting film reportedly mixes animation, archive TV clips, VHS footage and fan-recognisable memorabilia with live O2 material, aiming for something between gig film and career retrospective.
It’s worth separating the claim from the craft here. That Abba Voyage influenced the format is Cocker and Jennings’ own account, straightforwardly checkable from the interview; what’s not yet verifiable is whether the finished film delivers the “opportunity to go a bit further” Jennings describes, since this piece is a pre-release conversation, not a review.
Young crowds, old catalogue
Cocker professes genuine bafflement at the age of his audience - noting shows, including a recent Manchester date, packed with fans who weren’t born when Pulp first split. He can’t explain it, and to his credit doesn’t try to dress it up as a masterplan. This matters for the wider live circuit: heritage acts increasingly rely on catalogue rediscovery via streaming and social platforms rather than radio-era memory, and Pulp’s Instagram teaser for the reunion is itself a small case study in how bands now announce comebacks directly rather than through traditional press cycles.
End of the Road, where Cocker headlines as this piece is filed, is billed as Pulp’s last show “for a while” - not a retirement, not a farewell tour, just an ellipsis. Given the band’s history of declaring endings that didn’t stick, that vagueness looks deliberate rather than evasive.
The proportionate take
What’s solid here: a chart-topping album, a filmed arena show, a director with a genuine track record, and a stated creative debt to Abba Voyage’s staging innovations. What’s unverified: whether the film itself justifies the hybrid ambition, how it will be distributed or priced, and whether “young fans” translates into sustained ticket demand beyond a victory-lap tour. Nostalgia acts can sell out arenas without necessarily rebuilding a durable audience - the interview is candid enough to admit the uncertainty even as it promotes the film. Worth watching, not yet worth calling a triumph.