A band known for its sharp, sardonic pop was on the verge of walking away from its seventh album. The sessions had stalled, the producer was gone, and the English group Pulp had no clear path forward. Then, on October 22, 2001, We Love Life arrived on Island Records — an album that nearly never got finished.
Chris Thomas sessions scrapped
The trouble started with producer Chris Thomas, who had worked with Pulp on their two previous records. His stricter approach clashed with the band's wish to record more freely, so those sessions were scrapped. Keyboardist Candida Doyle later said that without the arrival of a new producer, Pulp might not have completed the album at all.
That new producer was Scott Walker, a singer and songwriter Pulp had admired for years. The two first met at the Meltdown festival in 2000, which Walker curated. Replacing Thomas, Walker became the album's producer, with Peter Walsh as co-producer, and the sessions moved to Metropolis studio in London.
A move away from This Is Hardcore
We Love Life was conceived as a deliberate move away from the disappointment of the previous album, This Is Hardcore. Where that record felt alienated, the new one aimed for a more organic sound and a close attention to nature. Frontman Jarvis Cocker said it was time to return to simple things, like the natural world — though he stressed this was not a pastoral album and he avoided any 'hippie' sentimentality.
The title itself changed after the attacks of September 11. Pulp had planned to call the record simply Pulp, reflecting its uncluttered sound, but Cocker felt that 'Love Life' was a good mood to put into the world at that moment. The final name, We Love Life, came as a more universal statement.
Peter Saville and the engraved cover
The cover, designed by Peter Saville, was minimalist: capital letters from the collection of London's St Bride Printing Library, engraved on wood by Louis Pouchée around the 1820s. It matched the album's stripped-back ambition. Among the songs, 'The Trees' sampled Stanley Myers and Hal Shaper's 'Tell Her You Love Her', while 'Wickerman' sampled Paul Giovanni's 'Willow's Song' from the film The Wicker Man. The album's visual identity had a quiet afterlife. The cover's engraved lettering later inspired the artwork for Sunbather, the 2013 album by the American metal band Deafheaven. It was a fitting echo for a record built on such deliberate, tactile choices.
One awkward moment hung over the sessions. Cocker had written a line in 'Bad Cover Version' that mocked an album by Scott Walker himself — 'Til the Band Comes In — long before Walker joined the project. Cocker admitted the recording of that song felt uncomfortable.
Despite the near-collapse, We Love Life reached sixth place on the UK Albums Chart and stayed in the chart for three weeks. It was the last Pulp studio album with bassist Steve Mackey, who died in 2023, and it closed the band's recording career for more than two decades. In the United States, the CD edition carried two bonus tracks: 'Yesterday' and 'Forever in My Dreams'. The album also earned a silver certification from the BPI for 60,000 copies sold in the United Kingdom. The album also drew strong critical attention. On Metacritic it holds an average score of 84 out of 100, based on 20 reviews. Pitchfork later placed We Love Life at number 194 on its list of the 200 best albums of the 2000s.
The album's organic textures and strange samples — bird song, tree effects, a baritone guitar line — made it feel like a band rediscovering why it made music. We Love Life is not just a comeback from a difficult session; it is the sound of Pulp choosing to stay alive.