Pearl

Sherriff wrote it and Ralph Jezzard produced it, with Rachel Goswell of Slowdive on backing vocals. The single sleeve dates the session to January 1991 at Gooseberry Studios, with the B-sides Come Heaven and In My Arms cut the same month at The Refuge in Reading. Dedicated released it on 18 March 1991: the 7 inch backed it with Come Heaven, the 12 inch carried a longer mix of Pearl plus both B-sides, and the CD added a short edit. It then became the second track on Whirlpool. Music On Vinyl reissued the 12 inch in 2022.

Under the guitars sits a sped-up loop of John Bonham's drums from When the Levee Breaks, with Schoolly D's P.S.K. What Does It Mean? beat in the breakdown. Sherriff said at the time that Pearl and Falling Down used as much sampling as Curve did, and that the band could have made it a radio song but chose to spoil it on purpose. He also said a hit would be a disaster, because people would then expect too much. Patman insisted it was a departure only from how people saw them, and in 2026 recalled that Sherriff thought of it as an anomaly, not written to be a hit. Steve Sutherland of Melody Maker called it "their third and finest EP", hearing as much of the Cocteau Twins and the Valentines in it as the Stone Roses, and NME later wrote of its dance cruise.

After

It reached 67 in Britain and 7 on the American modern rock chart in the summer of 1991, and it has since turned up on shoegaze anthologies such as The Brit Box (2007) and Still in a Dream (2016). setlist.fm logs 53 performances, level with Autosleeper and Treasure behind only Falling Down, from November 1990 at the Powerhaus in Islington through the 2026 tour. At the Luminaire warm-up in November 2009 Kirsty Hawkshaw of Opus III sang the backing part. A live-in-the-studio re-recording from 2009 was sent to radio before the 2010 tour. Both uploads in the hypersongs web carry the Whirlpool album version.