Pulled Apart By Horses
Pulled Apart By Horses played at End Of The Road Festival 2010.
In the words of their new single, Pulled Apart By Horses are going ‘Back To The Fuck Yeah’. After two years tearing up the UK touring circuit as quickly as tearing up their own bodies, Leeds’ favourite trash-punks, are set to make good on their early promise as one of the country’s most exciting new rock bands. This is their story.
Nobody likes to be called a supergroup, but they are certainly super, and it is true that they were reassembled from the severed remains of four bands that had gained currency around the Leeds underground. James Brown had played guitar in It Takes Bridges, Tom Hudson sang with Mother Vulpine, Rob Lee played bass in Monster Killed By Laser and Lee Vincent drummed in Concentration Champ.
James had been running an indie label so already had the connections, and after the particularly messy demise of his band, was moved to put them to work since he was “desperate to keep on playing and I’d wanted to have a bit more fun in the band, do something different from what everyone else was doing in Leeds at the time.”
He snared Rob and Lee with the promise of forming “a Jesus Lizard rip-off band.” And so it was that one night Pulled Apart By Horses came together in the red light district of Leeds, “the least glamorous red light district in the UK” as he puts it. “We got together in a dank warehouse and wrote one song. Straight away it had a life of its own,” remembers James. They drafted in Tom as frontman and the circle was complete.
While the band’s original brief was to emulate the legendary Texan punks, the influence of four wild and often deranged musical minds meant it soon turned into something very much of its own. Tom names Nirvana, Refused and At The Drive-In as seminal influences, Rob points to King Crimson and wants to place proggy time-changes in a fun punk package, while Lee points to bands like Shellac and Flash Tunnel as “bands that are heavy without being metal.”
The result was a volatile sound all of its own; furious and chaotic, while remaining interesting over clever. “It turned into something else,” says James, “but we still wanted to keep it as something fun. People seemed interested in it and liked it, and it kind of developed.
Indeed, Pulled Apart By Horses’ inaugural live show came about with the same sense of drama that would go on to follow them around. As James remembers: “when we get four songs together, we hadn’t played a gig, so I went on a forum in Leeds and said the members of these four bands have formed a new band called Pulled Apart By Horses and they’re playing their secret first-ever show somewhere in Leeds. If you want to come send a text to this mobile number and we’ll put you on the list and tell you where it is.”
It was at the Pack Horse, the chief watering hole of everyone who’s anyone in the city, and where James was living, that the show took place. Being the epicentre of the city’s alt.rock community it was a full house, The band hit the ground running and have barely stopped gigging since. “Our live show got people talking,” says Lee, “people could see that we were enjoying it and they wanted to be involved as well. I think people had missed that chaotic live show.”
‘Chaotic’ is a massive understatement for the nuclear-powered PABH live experience, their every show a violent whirlwind of noise and acrobatics - of the body as much as the guitar. In a much kinder sense, the band’s onstage antics echo the medieval execution technique after which they were named. Certainly, the members have the scars to prove it.
James, who had a tendency to jump on his knees, ended up in hospital on a drip after an infection turned his leg into a gigantic yellow balloon. “The Doctor said if I’d left it a couple more days it would’ve spread to my balls, and once it gets to your balls it spreads everywhere.”
At last year’s Leeds Festival, Tom knocked a chunk out of it his shin and ended up with a ‘spurter’. It wasn’t until the end of the show that he even realised his jeans were black with blood. “I thought, I’ve smashed my leg and broken my guitar strap, I may as well crowd-surf. I got back onstage and realised I had a bloody hand print on my shoulder.”
Tom’s girlfriend will no longer watch the band live through fear of what might happen, but none of this has made them tone down the intensity. “That’s what it boils down to,” considers James, “because when we play it’s just what happens. It’s not something we plan or think about it just happens because we enjoy it.” And as their reputation grew, they found themselves princes of a new UK underground as support band of choice for aggro-rock’s ivy league, racking up tours with Future Of The Left, Biffy Clyro, Glassjaw and The Bronx.
Amid all of this chaos, the band found time to release debut single ‘Meat Balloon’ at the end of 2008, a release that came with a free comic that was the handiwork of Tom. The following year came the follow-up ‘I Punched A Lion In The Throat’, which would later appear on their ‘Tour Traxx EP’. To celebrate this year’s Record Store Day they put out the limited edition EP ‘Live At Leeds’ in cheeky homage to The Who’s collection of the same name.
Now, signed with Transgressive Records, they are ready to release their eponymous debut album. Recorded at Bridlington’s Lodge Studios with producer James Kenosha, the album expertly captures the cavalcade of their live shows while expanding the sound into that of a proper gleaming rock record.
Capturing this energy was the most crucial thing. Says Tom: “Most of the takes that we kept were from a bit later on when we started to loosen it a bit. It’s a bit more on the edge because there was more energy going into it. If there was any bum notes or fuck ups, if thee energy was there the we kept it as it was.”
“We were very aware that when you have a reputation as a live band then your album will be judged against your live shows so we knew we had to do the live show justice. But we’re very happy with it.”
Indeed, from the breakneck shriek of lead single ‘Back To The Fuck Yeah’, through the pure-pop-with-teeth of ‘Yeah Buddy’, the screeching hardcore jam ‘The Crapsons’, down to the lurching heavy-metal thud of ‘Den Horn’, this is an album that brilliantly captures the surreal thrill that makes Pulled Apart By Horses what they are.
Just don’t ask them for explanations of their brilliantly bizarre worldview. Rather, they insist the wonderfully deranged language just spills out of their random brains. “When bands tour with us they think we’ve got our own in-jokes. Then they realise that we just talk constant bullshit all the time.”
Rather, with the album, Pulled Apart By Horses are offering the rest of the world an open invitation to the time of their lives – crash helmets and shinpads optional. “One of the energies of the band is we’re all like little brothers that get together and we all torment each other and piss each other off a bit and it all come through into the energy of the music.”
He considers this. “I think it’s the personalities that make it as well. We’re just one big, fucked up family.”