Get the latest gossip

Pulp’s secret Glastonbury set review – still the magnificently misshapen oddballs of British pop

Returning to Worthy Farm for the first time in 30 years, Jarvis Cocker and co are as dark, grubby and joyous as ever, instantly turning the audience to misty-eyed displays of devotion

There’s something charming about the fact that they open with Sorted For E’s & Wizz, a song that takes a pretty equivocal, even steely view of the kind of hedonism that prevails at Glastonbury: proof, should it be needed, that Pulp remain a band who seldom go about things the straightforward way. Photograph: Anthony Harvey/ShutterstockThis means that, for all the nostalgia their old songs evoke in anyone who can remember the 90s – and a quick scan around the audience reveals a number of people looking distinctly moist-eyed as they play – they aren’t welded to the era in which they were first recorded, so they haven’t really dated. Cocker, meanwhile, remains a fantastic frontman, dispensing sage wisdom about the festival itself – “to enjoy Glastonbury, you have to submit to it” – and reflecting on how terrified the band were to find themselves filling in at short notice for an indisposed Stone Roses in 1995: “But I feel very relaxed today – how about you?”

Get the Android app