PulpMain stage, Friday★★★★☆Let’s all meet up at All Together Now, where Britpop’s supreme ironists Pulp bring the curtains down on the festival’s opening night with a set bursting with dark wit and supernovas of nostalgia. Master of ceremonies is Colonel Corduroy himself, Jarvis Cocker, dressed head-to-toe in geography-teacher browns and greys and yet, somehow, under all those layers of naff, radiating an unmistakable rock-star aura.It’s a headline performance sure to send Pulp fans new and old back to their tents chuffed to have witnessed something special. Our starter for zen is Sorted for E’s & Wizz, Cocker’s philosophical rumination on the exhausting thrill of being off your face at a festival, during which the frontman – in fine voice – drops in a reference to Waterford without it sounding like shameless pandering.But the gig really kicks off in earnest as guitarist Mark Webber cranks out the gloriously glam opening riff to Disco 2000. Dashing across the stage, Cocker suggests that we all meet up at the turn of the millennium – a date when a fair chunk of the audience were in nappies, had they been born at all.Pulp were that rare Britpop band who seemed to find success not all it was cracked up to be. We are reminded of that fact as Cocker negotiates the suffocating doom of their comedown dirge This Is Hardcore. That thread of anxiety running through their early work is supersized into an entire tapestry of ennui on 2025 single Spike Island. Here, the singer interrogates the longing so many feel towards the 1990s and wonders whether the reality ever really matched the myth. Pulp have been touring more or less the same set through the summer. There are, however, some tweaks for local sensibilities. With considerable bafflement, Jarvis says he was advised to say “Up Mayo”. His tone makes it clear he has no idea who or what Mayo might be or what the “up” refers to. Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker at All Together Now. Photograph: Enda O'Dowd [ In pictures: Festival-goers arrive for All Together NowOpens in new window ]Cocker is just as amusing when he introduces Do You Remember The First Time? by retrieving a copy of a review of Pulp’s first-ever Irish show. This was at Dublin’s Rock Garden in 1993, at which their equipment was nicked, and they were booked into less than salubrious accommodation on Gardiner Street.Pulp at All Together Now. Photograph: Enda O'Dowd As expected, the crowning moment is Common People – Pulp’s fantastically withering demolition job of nepo-babies and idle rich kids written before either concept had really gained purchase in the public imagination. It’s funny, angry, heartfelt, with a brilliant keyboard refrain from Candida Doyle and a chorus that goes on forever – and what more could anyone want on the first night of a music festival?[ Thousands of music, Mayo and Glen Hansard fans descend on All Together NowOpens in new window ]