I spoke to my favourite member of Pulp and discovered they're Scottish

As a long term Pulp fan, I never would have expected to speak to their keyboardist, Candida Doyle, from her Scottish island home, with its mercurial phone reception.

It’s a bit like actually discovering Jarvis Cocker in the aisle of a supermarket, perhaps in the style of the Common People video.

That’s because I imagine all the band members as living in their famous hometown of Sheffield. Or the rock star epicenter of London.

Indeed, it’s true that Doyle spends much of her time at another base near Hackney, especially as Pulp prepares to release their first new album in 24 years, More, on June 6, with a UK tour starting on Saturday June 7 at Glasgow’s OVO Hydro.

However, her proper home is in Shetland, and she adores it.

“Now that the group has reformed, I’m here a bit less than usual, but it's absolutely wonderful,” says Doyle, whose maternal grandfather owned a fishing factory here. “My family lives on the same street as me, and it's actually the road my mum grew up on and is beside a hill with a view of the sea. It’s very different to London, basically”.

Apparently, the band did once play in Shetland, back in the Nineties. It was a bit of a journey though, for the other members.

However, she wouldn’t necessarily describe herself as Scottish.

Doyle, as her surname might suggest, is also half Irish and was brought up in England. “I’m everything but Welsh,” she says.

Anyway, she will be away from her spiritual home a lot in 2025. After the UK tour, later in the year, they’ll be doing the US and Korea.

Back in Pulp's Nineties heyday, Doyle never imagined she’d still be on the road, at 61.

She was slightly blind-sided, when the group reformed again back in 2023. (They’d also got together in 2011, for another tour).

“I knew that I would never say no, but I’d never suggest that we reformed. It was funny because Jarvis sent me a text saying, ‘Can I come round? I'd like to run something by you. And I sent a text back, saying, ‘Oh, God’. He said, ‘No, it's nothing to worry about’. I said, okay,” she says. “ Then he came round, and we chatted, and then he said, ‘I'm thinking of reforming the group. Would you be interested?’ and without hesitance, I said yes, it was incredible. I was quite surprised at myself”.

And, so, they’re back again, and Glasgow seems the perfect location for night one of the tour.

After all, the band has played this city so many times, from King Tut’s to The Barrowlands. Although Doyle prefers a smaller venue, she thinks that they can still connect with a big crowd, thanks to their charismatic frontman.

“I think Jarvis is very good at making it feel personal. The crowd reacts well to him and it brings it all together,” says Doyle, who feels safe while slotted behind her keyboard. “I don't know how he does it to be honest”.

Doyle has been in Pulp since 1984, when she replaced the previous keyboard player, Tim Allcard. Another long time member of the band was bassist Steve Mackey, who joined in 1989 and sadly died just two years ago. The album is dedicated to him.

What would Steve have thought?

“I think he'd be annoyed that he wasn't part of it,” says Doyle.

Indeed, it’s a fantastic album that’s full of Pulp’s signature nostalgia, cheek, charm and wit. The music, keyboards included, seems more sophisticated than ever. Sometimes richly orchestral, other times light and fluffy.

They have new members now. As well as the originals - Jarvis Cocker, Mark Webber, Nick Banks and Doyle - they’ve added Andrew McKinney, Emma Smith, Adam Betts and Jason Buckle, plus string arranger Richard Jones. The first track to be written was Hymn of the North, which they played when doing soundchecks while on tour back in 2023. The rest was recorded over the course of three weeks in November last year. Apparently that’s the shortest time a Pulp album has ever taken to record.

It’s no wonder that, though Doyle may have got songs like Babies and Disco 2000 down pat, she hasn’t quite got to grips with the new tunes.

“To be honest, I don't even know the LP that well at the moment. We did a few radio concerts recently, and we all felt a little bit under rehearsed,” she says. “And at the moment, the songs are so new, I can't even think which I'm most proud of. I know which ones I like the most - Farmers Market and My Sex. They’re quite special”.

At the moment, their single, Spike Island, seems to be getting loads of radio play and wonderful reviews. Doyle wasn’t sure about it at first.

“I was hesitant about writing new songs. It's not an easy thing and I had some reluctance about moving forward in that way,” she says. “And because I was reluctant, I didn't really expect that everyone else had their own opinions and would be really pleased. I thought, sometimes, if you have your favorite band, and then years later they introduce some new songs, you just want the old stuff. But that doesn't seem to be happening”.

However, even though they're oldies, there are a few songs from the vast Pulp repertoire that Doyle finds harder to play than others.

“Dishes is really hard to play because I'm very exposed, while Common People is such a loud song that if you make a slight mistake, you can get away with it,” she says. “I Spy is really exciting to play live, and to be on stage and playing one of your favorite songs and looking around and the whole band's there and you’re all together is an intense thrill”.

Doyle’s toughness is admirable. As well as not knowing that she’s a Shetlander, I didn’t realise, until just before our interview, that she suffers from rheumatoid arthritis and has kept it under the radar for years. Now, she’s totally open about the condition. It slightly improved after the menopause, as there are links between hormones and the condition. However, she cut down her medication too much, on the last tour, so her knee swelled up and hasn’t completely recovered.

There have been other highs and lows in her epically long career in Pulp.

“The build up to getting famous was really exciting. From ‘92 up to mid ‘96, we just got higher and higher and bigger and bigger,” she says. “It was really, really exciting, and then, and then I was exhausted, and had this big panic attack on tour, and then went off touring. And that was mid June, 1996. And so for the rest of that year and the next year, I felt a bit unstable. I'd say that was the low point”.

I mention the recent autobiography, Fingers Crossed: How Music Saved Me From Success, by Lush frontwoman, Miki Berenyi. In it, she shares a lot of the misogyny that was rife in the Nineties, and seemed to be very much knitted into the Britpop scene.

Thankfully, Pulp always seemed to be the good guys (and girl).

Doyle hasn’t read the book. However, she tells me that she didn't experience any nefarious behaviour.

“Being this lead singer, she's in a much different position to the one I'm in,” says Doyle, in reference to Berenyi. “And the thing is, being in a band with Jarvis, he's so charismatic that the rest of the band are quite often overlooked. He just naturally attracts attention. I often thought of leaving the group, because we had some really hard times, but one of the reasons I stayed was because there weren't enough women in groups, and I thought I’ve got to stay just to show other women that you can do it”.

Tickets for Pulp are available at https://www.ovohydro.com/events/detail/pulp