On a sweltering day in Brighton just before their performanc later that night at The Great Escape, I was lucky enough to catch up with Leeds-based hardcore rockers Pulled Apart By Horses. Their single, brilliantly titled Back To the Fuck Yeah is out on the 14th June 2010, along with their hotly anticipated album on the 21st. We chatted album, keeping the energy and future plans.
After much talk of staying in ‘shed-rooms’ (bedrooms made from sheds, which sound like a great idea) and bands getting pissed with press people, we got down to it.
Mark (TNC) – How would you describe your sound?
PABH – Well you’re the journalist! You figure it out! (laughs)
M – I’ve read some interviews and they describe your sound in some odd ways…Indie/Disco-influenced Punk.
PABH – That’s kind of it really….Indie Punk Disco Hardcore…err..people come up with all kinds of terms really.
M – Posi-core? As in positive hardcore? I’ve heard that..
James – Yeah that’s good I like that. Legacy core? (laughs) I think the main aim of what we were doing was, to make some kind of music that we didn’t really know what it sounded like, or we’d not really heard it before..
M – You didn’t focus on being like ‘that’s what we need to sound like’.
Tom – Yeah that’s the thing, cos we’re all into completely different bands. So the case is, when you get a band and they’re all listening to the same bands they’re just basically gonna sound like the main band that they love or whatever. But with us guys we’ve got such a varied taste in music and stuff that it’s kinda just a big mash of everything really.
Rob – When we first started out it was rigid. James’s idea was to sound like Jesus Lizard. It totally ended sounding nothing like that which is great! The music just took on its own life and its own thing rather than us trying to force it to be anything.
Tom – We’ll write a song and it will sound completely different to anything else. I’ve got a new song that sounds like Status Quo mixed with Hot Snakes (laughs).
Rob – I turned round in practise like ‘is that Status Quo?’ and you just went ‘nope it’s the new song!’
(Laughs)
James – We’ve got a song called The Lighthouse, and it’s basically Bulls On Parade backwards (laughs), literally it is Bulls On Parade backwards.
M – So your album is coming out in June, with the single just before it, what formats it going to be in?
Rob – It’s 7” and digital download called Back To The Fuck Yeah.
Tom – We’re launching it with a video that we directed ourselves, and it’s basically like a little homage to Evil Dead. It’s got us being dragged through the woods, all the shakey camera shots. I think we got it spot on, actually.
M – That sounds pretty sweet.
Tom – It’s a fun song.
James – Yeah it fits the song really well.
Tom – There’s a big uplifting chorus, and when it kicks in, it’s just the word ‘YEAAAHHHH’, and as soon as it kicks in we get dragged back.
M – You re-recorded some of the tracks for the album?
James – Yeah the songs have changed since we recorded them a while ago.
Tom – If you listen to the Meat Balloon vinyl it sounds like you’ve got it on the wrong speed.
M – Were you worried in the recording process that you’d lose the energy you have when you play live?
Rob – Yeah that was the main idea was to capture that. We did it in a really short period of time, and we stayed in this small converted barn in Bridlington, getting cabin fever and going crazy for a week. All of thats gone into the album.
Tom – To do the vocals we were like swigging whisky and just trying to get that sound that you’d get when we’re in the middle of tour or something.
Rob – That was priority number 1. It’s got to capture how we are as a live band.
M – It couldn’t be a polished thing.
Tom – We just had these visions of getting these reviews saying ‘awesome live band, but the album doesn’t do justice’. There’s even a bit on ‘High Five’ where my guitar lead drops out just before I came in, and if you listen closely you can hear it go ‘bruhhh’ and plug back in.
James – We didn’t want to go in for a month of something and analyse each track.
Tom – We often ended up going with later takes, as the first ones were too neat.
M – You’re working with Transgressive, has it been good so far?
Rob – Yesssss.
Tom – They’re like a DIY label that have stepped up a notch. It was important to meet the people and go in with people we could trust more than anything.
James – It’s like you get these deals put on the tabel with the big names and you think ‘why do they want to do it’?
Tom – It’s still a learning curve.
M – What’s the plan for the future then?
James – Well album out in june, then first proper headline tour. Then it’s gonna be festivals, and this time we’re doing a couple of European ones too. Then they’ll be another single from the album, and another tour, probably longer…
Tom – And trying to cram in writing the next one somewhere amongst all that chaos.
M – Are you worried about the second album at all?
Rob – No not all all. Bring it on.
Tom – I don’t really care, we’ve got to where we got to by doing what we enjoy doing.
Rob – This first album is our like ‘Bleach’ album, we did it quickly for no money etc. Hopefully the next one will be like ‘Nevermind’ (Laughs).
Tom – And then I’ll shoot myself.
Rob – We can’t afford a shotgun….
James – I’ve already started using herion…(laughs)
