In a classic ‘you’ve hit the big time, now what?’ dilemma, following Different Class’s success Jarvis Cocker struggled with writer’s block, the band as a whole lost key member Russell Senior, and expectations that they’d create something exactly in the vein of the previous album were all over the place. The result was astonishing: updating the dour visions of Freaks for a vastly bigger audience with an equally bigger budget, This is Hardcore was a masterpiece of misanthropy and desperation, with open Scott Walker nods throughout in particular that were going to play out more in the future.