4 / 10
Take note, Muse, for this is the fate that awaits you. It's with tender regret that NME has the privilege of reintroducing the world to the one and only piss-poor Pulp. Ladies and gentlemen, they're back.
Rialto were the brainchild of meek aristocrat Louis Eliot who at one stage had a reasonable claim to being the unluckiest man in the 99p bin of pop. Dropped by one label immediately before their first album and by another one immediately afterward, to any sane man this would be time to give up - Eliot however doesn't know when he's beaten.
Hence 'Night On Earth'. Surely conceived in the waiting room during a Restart interview, it shows our feckless heroes having one last reckless crack at stardom and failing. Horribly.
With a new electronic sound (a euphemism for the fact that the bailiffs have impounded their drum kit), 'London Crawling' and 'Catherine's Wheel' follow Rialto's xeroxed 'nice-melody-shame-about-the-lyrics' blueprint of past hits 'Monday Morning 5:19' and 'Untouchable'.
But what second-hand magic there ever was has long since passed, contrary to Eliot's plea that "it's nowhere near the final curtain" on 'Anything Could Happen'. The fact that their audience has walked out on them should really have given the game away.
Congratulations then, chaps. You outlasted Marion. Now go away.
Jim Wirth
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