Pulp, Finsbury Park, London

Summer 2023 might be a heavyweight year for musical legends traversing the circuit (Blur! Springsteen! Monkeys! Elton!), but we’d wager that no entrance will rank quite as high on the iconic scale this year as Jarvis Cocker’s delivery onto the stage at Finsbury Park.

With an enormous glowing moon beaming down from the back of the stage, Cocker rises slowly from beneath it, his gangly limbs posed and silhouetted by the light behind him. If the opening credits to James Bond were to feature a near-sexagenarian with a penchant for velvet and plastic specs, they’ve got exactly the man for the job, and as a reintroduction to Pulp it’s utterly perfect: flamboyant, a little bit ridiculous and entirely like no other.

Sandwiched between headline shows from Jamie T and The 1975 over a three-day stint at the North London park, where both of those artists stack their bills high with supports, Pulp have opted for a short but perfectly-curated evening. It’s easy to see why opener Baxter Dury and Jarvis are firm friends; taking the more deadpan wit of his recorded material and slathering it with a stage persona that we can only describe as completely insane (where he procured the hairy wolf mask that he dons halfway through, who can say), there’s a cheekiness to Dury that tracks entirely with the band at the top of the bill. Recent tracks ‘Aylesbury Boy’ and ‘Shadow’ are windows into the musician’s storied past, but in the present he’s clearly having a total hoot.

Fresh from a stadium tour supporting Harry Styles, Wet Leg are almost unrecognisable from the nervous, giggling band that first graced our stages barely more than 18 months ago. Sporting an Arsenal shirt and a pride rainbow guitar strap, vocalist Rhian Teasdale has relaxed into a completely commanding frontperson - leading the crowd through their every-award-under-the-sun-winning debut album with the confidence of someone fully settled into their role at indie’s top table. As is often the way on windy-ish days at Finsbury Park, the sound is quiet - not conducive, sadly, to ‘Ur Mum’’s traditional “longest and loudest scream” crowd participation - but never mind. Wet Leg will surely be headlining shows of this size by themselves before LP2 is out.