Intro: The Gift Recordings

Pulp’s profile finally started to really click in the early 1990s thanks to a series of independently released singles, which got a combined rerelease on their next label, Island, as Intro. By this point Pulp had fully finessed their style — Jarvis Cocker’s knowing, wounded sung/spoken tales of lust and love plus the lusher arrangements often showcasing Candida Doyle’s simultaneously peppy and melancholy keyboards — and the results were top notch, from the wry trip out of “Space” to the cabaret kick of “Razzmatazz” and the nobody-else-but-them psychogeographic mini epic “Sheffield: Sex City.”