There are those who think of Pulp as a 1990s Britpop band that duked it out (and continues to duke it out) with the likes of Oasis and Blur for the dubious title of “Best Britpop Band of the 1990s.”

Those people, of course, are very, very wrong.

Pulp was always something else. It had been around since the post-punk early '80s (when it was a bizarro dark band from Sheffield that intrigued the great John Peel). Its peculiar lineup could include a silent lady keyboard player and a dapper violinist with a Weimar hairdo.

And, of course, it had Jarvis Cocker, one of the most intelligent frontmen ever, an epic self-mythologizer who could wax poetic and sexy about everything from white-trash UK daily life, to class resentments, to his own panic attacks.

Pulp disintegrated slowly around the turn of the millennium and Jarvis went on to short-lived married life (with a French beauty, natch) and to sow his wild oats as a solo artist (including the obligatory Steve Albini-produced album).

But now, they've reunited for some European dates, and people from around the world (including a few lucky Angelenos) are converging at Barcelona for their big reunion show at the Primavera festival.

As a warmup for the Primavera gig, a couple of days ago Pulp played a smallish show in Toulouse, France. Wanna see what Pulp's “Disco 2000 sounds like in 2011?:

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