Pulp’s Mark Webber on his photo book and the band’s new songs: “It’s somewhere between mature and frothy pop music”

nme.com:

Pulp guitarist Mark Webber has spoken to NME about his new book I’m With Pulp – Are You? – as well as what the future may hold for the band.Published back in September, the new book gathers Webber’s extensive collection of ephemera and objects.

It was accumulated over 40 years with the band and presented as a visual history of Pulp as told through photos, flyers, record covers, setlists, badges, posters, press clippings, merchandise and more.It comes with a foreword from frontman Jarvis Cocker, who describes Webber as a “hoarder” as well as the band’s “first fan” as well their “first tour manager” before he joined as a member in 1995.“I don’t think I can claim to the first fan, but definitely one of the few in that period of the mid-to-late ‘80s,” Webber told NME. “There were not many people interested.”Speaking about the band’s infamous wilderness period of their pre-fame period in the 1980s, Webber said: “I don’t think it was very romantic!

Obviously I wasn’t in the group at the time, but I’m pretty sure they were frustrated that they’d already been doing it for quite a while and were not gaining much traction.“The music they were making wasn’t as accessible as it became.

They still had great ballads like ‘They Suffocate At Night’ and ‘I Want You’, but then this was juxtaposed with the more ‘spikes’ music like ‘The Will To Power’ and things like that.