Ever since guitar music exchanged its dependency on new blood for a life support machine, band reunions have come thick and fast. Some have been cynical, bloodless exercises in late onset remuneration, and some have been excellent fun for all that (Pixies, say). Many, though, have served merely as grim reminders of how unforgiving the passage of time can be; how you cannot, ever, replicate the granular ecology in which bands originally thrived, and how your own days of feckless hedonism are now as distant as a fossil record.
Then there are those rare reunions that feel right and proper – good, even – when a kaleidoscope of factors all pull together spectacularly. Can the band still play? Has anyone run to fat? Do the songs still matter? Any reunion is helped by a band's own propensity for nostalgia. Punk, for instance, just doesn't work; you can't rekindle urgent immediacy. The Sex Pistols reunion was a travesty that called into question that band's revolutionary credentials.
Pulp, though, were fondly anachronistic even as they were peaking, never really part of the Britpop phenomenon, although they were caught up in its momentum. They were singing songs about losing their virginity well into their 30s; on songs like the tremendous "Sorted for Es and Wizz" they were hymning a moment – the dying embers of rave culture – through a lens of hindsight, even as it was happening. "Disco 2000" – stunning tonight – anticipates the millennium that had not yet come, and flits back and forth in time, reminiscing.
Tonight, they begin, as ever, with "Do You Remember the First Time", a song about cherry-popping which still resonates hard with this packed house, despite the fact that many here have clearly long exchanged a hormone haze for commitment and babies. "Babies", meanwhile, has always been a sensationally bittersweet look back at pubescent lust, sung as its author was well into his sexual prime. It's absolutely terrific tonight, punctuating a set that veers from best-loved hits to arcane relics. "Lipgloss" is a rare treat bathed in pink light; a space-rocking "O U" is from even deeper in the vaults. "Wickerman", from the twilight of their career, features some backing singers and falls a little flat, one of the very few disconnections of the night.
The band have racked up a few babies of their own, too, and found other commitments. The various Pulps have spent the intervening nine years since their farewell gig at Rotherham's Magna Centre in 2002 pursuing interests in pottery (drummer Nick Banks), counselling (Candida Doyle, still a magnificently two-fingered keyboard player), curating film at the ICA (guitarist Mark Webber) and producing other bands (bassist Steve Mackey and guitarist/violin player Russell Senior).
According to Pulp's publicist: "Russell has been dealing in antique glassware, foraging for fungi, systemising his collection of herbs, writing a geologically themed novel and is currently working on a gay musical set during the miners' strike." Tonight they are augmented by session musician Leo Abrahams and latterday live guitarist Richard Hawley. At one point there are five guitarists playing – not bad going for a notionally weedy indie-pop cabal. They really are much louder nowadays.
Tonight's thoroughly edifying show is Pulp's first outing under a roof since their warmly received tour of Australia and Europe's summer festivals began. The unexpected indoor heat makes Jarvis Cocker disrobe a little, early in the set. Gratifyingly, he remains more electrocuted mantis than man, exaggerated limbs punching holes in the air, pelvis thrusting with the fury of old.
He can't just whip his jacket off, of course. Jarvis has to provide a running commentary on how you are supposed to do it, deflating the pop star's traditional act of striptease. Deflation is one of Cocker's specialities, a kind of arch, northern reflex taken to wry extremes. It drove Cocker onstage at the Brits in 1996 to speak truth to power and puncture the excesses of Michael Jackson; it makes him a bit of a hero, still. He can't help but deflate pomposity, even unintentionally. Tonight Cocker quotes various sages who were either born or died on 31 August – John Bunyan, Charles Baudelaire – an act beautifully scotched when Webber hits some guitar strings and Cocker sets off a volley of expletives at him.
Pulp's lasers are in on the act too. These rave tools spend a good 10 minutes spelling out niceties at the start of the show. They incite us to make noise – the oldest cliche in the book. But because it's written in green and it's Pulp, it feels like we are in on the gag of stagecraft. And then there's the biggest raspberry of all: "Common People", that spectacularly nuanced act of class warfare that closes the main set with joyous pandemonium.
Just as important as all Pulp's precious deflation, though, is inflation. Pulp's obsession with sex still drips off these songs, an obsession which the passage of time might suddenly cast in a different light. The years could have turned Cocker into a dirty old man rather than a whirlwind of badly repressed ardour, but somehow, despite the naked pleading of songs like "Underwear", this 47-year-old manages to keep his overactive groin in inverted commas.
After tonight's set at Ireland's Electric Picnic festival, Pulp will go on hiatus once more. No one is saying at this stage whether this is the first of many more times, or the last. Witty and substantial, you could see Pulp as a going, mature concern. But is there a creative future for a band whose sober last album, We Love Life, drew their narrative arc to a close. It is hard to envision a time when repeated plays of "Common People" would grow stale, but Pulp really are too precious to wear out their welcome back.
