Pulp Documentary and Live Album Announced, Tracing Band’s Rise from Obscurity

The long arc from cult concern to generational reference point gets a close-up in Pulp: What Do You Do For An Encore?, a 90-minute concert film arriving exclusively on MUBI this fall. Directed by Garth Jennings and narrated by frontman Jarvis Cocker, the movie draws on 20 songs from the band’s catalog — both hits and deep cuts — and footage from their June 2025 London O2 Arena show, a stop on the global tour behind the album MORE.

Jennings’s connection to the group goes back to 1997, when he directed the promo video for “Help the Aged.” Now he pieces together a portrait of a band that, as the press release puts it, built a following through “irony, rebellion, and razor-sharp social commentary.” The film doesn’t treat the history as nostalgia; it frames the concert as a living event where those songs find new friction.

The documentary’s soundtrack is being released as Live!, a standalone album out August 28, 2026 and available for pre-order now. Cocker’s note on the title is direct: “A concert is an event where songs come back to life. That’s why this album is called Live! — it’s both a statement of fact (it’s a recording of a live band) and a challenge (come on! Everyone come alive!).” The setlist spans from early singles like “Babies” to later material such as “A Sunset,” capturing a body of work that made misfits audible across decades.