Pulled Apart By Horses are back! The new record "Tough Love" came out in January and is causing quite a stir. The Leeds quartet is now half way through their UK headline tour and after that- next stop Europe!
Est. 1987 headed to Manchester and caught up with lead singer Tom Hudson and bassist Rob Lee to chat all things touring, their music and comedy encounters with Thom Yorke!
Est. 1987 headed to Manchester and caught up with lead singer Tom Hudson and bassist Rob Lee to chat all things touring, their music and comedy encounters with Thom Yorke!
Hey guys! How’s the tour going so far? You
played Sheffield last night – guessing that
was your closest to a hometown show?
TOM- Yeah, Sheffield and Manchester
ROB- Well, I’m actually from Sheffield originally, so mum and dad came down last night.
T- So, if it would have been crap
yesterday, Rob would have turned his back on his hometown.
R- I was pulling out a few extra rock
style moves as well…
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| Tom on stage in Manchester |
T- For your mum? [laughing]. No, it’s
been great, every gig that we’ve done so far has been a proper eye opener
because we haven’t toured properly on a headline tour since winter 2010.
R- We’ve all got a bit of a communal
cold going on though!
Straight after this you’re heading
to Europe to tour- are you looking forward to
it? And is there a difference in crowd from UK
T- Yeah, they have a different attitude
to gigs out there and music in general. There’s definitely a lot less, I won’t
call it snobbery, but they are more laid back about it and it’s just a night out
for them.
R- But, then at the same time, if you impress them they
are very supportive, they’ll buy merch and stuff and it’s a bit more old school,
they’ll get the vinyls. Over here our crowds are quite mixed, but there seems
to be a lot more older people in Europe that
are into us, like old school rockers.
Your new album, “Tough Love”, just came out, so are you playing tracks from
that as well as older stuff?
R- We’re going to mix things up.
T- It’s not exactly half and half; we
will play a bit more new stuff but that’s only because we’ve been playing the
first album for a long time.
R- We’re playing some older songs that
we hadn’t played for a while.
T- We’ve rediscovered some ones that we
haven’t got sick of playing so much. There’s one, “E= MC Hammer” that ended up
being a B-side, so we’ve dusted that one out.
R- It was almost like we cheated on it,
broke up with it and then got back together with it- we’re in love with it
again.
You guys have a bit of a reputation
for getting yourselves injured on stage- how’s the injury count this tour?
T- I’ve got really weird injuries but
they’re not all band related. I burnt myself the other night on a pizza-
getting it out of the oven, I’ve got a thorn in my foot...
R- His girlfriend was in the van and she
needed to pull over for a wee, so he got out in to the bushes with her to
protect her…
T- But, I
fell down a bank into a thorn bush…
R- He came
back like a wounded animal with a thorn in his paw!
So, no trips to A&E yet?
T- No, not yet, hopefully not going to
happen! If I could avoid getting injured, then I would.
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| Pulled Apart By Horses |
In terms of your new album, there is
a definite progression from your first. When did you start thinking about your
second album?
R- Ideas have been kicking around for a
long time really, but then we focussed on it for a few months and pulled it all
together.
T- We still had lots of festivals on
the weekends so it was cool; we didn’t do that thing where a band pisses off
for like three years and then comes back and everyone’s forgotten. We were still
playing like Reading and Leeds, and went to SXSW
in Texas and Australia
R- The first album was a bit more of a
communal effort where we were all in a room banging it out and coming up with
songs, just jamming; we had no idea that we would even record an album. But
this time around, songs were written by individual members, stolen moments when
you weren’t on tour but were at home and could think about things a bit more.
T- It’s just a bit more focussed
really. Before, we would just write songs and kind of scrunch them all together
and that was the album.
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| Tom & Rob on stage at Manchester Club Academy |
Do you guys still live in Leeds and still go to The Packhorse, which is where you
played your first gig as a band?
T- Yeah, Packhorse, Brudenell, that’s
basically our weekends!
R- Although we haven’t been to The
Packhorse in a while.
T- Probably because James [guitar] and Lee [drums] don't live there any more.
A lot of bands head to London , but Leeds has a great music scene and in terms of
venues, lots of good ones – will Leeds always
be home?
Both- Yeah, definitely!
T- As a band we spend so much time
dipping in and out of London
R- I think that’s quite an old
fashioned idea now that you have to be in London Leeds is a great place to be because it’s so central. On
this tour we’ve been going back home most nights which is cool. Once we get in
to Europe and we have to spend three weeks
constantly with each other we will want to kill one another.
T- There’s no going back! It is good
though. Whenever we’ve been away for a while and we come home and are on the
motorway passing Meadowhall and Sheffield we know we're nearly home.
R- Leeds is one of those places that’s
quite magnetic and people end of wanting to stay there.
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| Lead singer Tom and guitarist James |
You’re named after Thom Yorke’s song
“Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses”- have you ever met the man himself and thanked
him for the name?
R- Well, James is a massive Radiohead
fan and we knew we wanted a name with Horse in it, because of The Packhorse pub
[where we first rehearsed as a band]. Then James suggested Pulled Apart By
Horses and it’s actually a Thom Yorke B-side “Reckoner “Feeling Pulled Apart By
Horses”. Anyway, we were at Latitude Festival and myself and James were in the
queue in the catering tent and I saw Thom Yorke behind us and said to James, and
he was just like “whatever” thinking I was joking. So, he turned around and saw
him and went white as a sheet and got really nervous and asking what he should
do. James got so hyped up and then eventually Thom Yorke was outside scraping
his leftovers into the bin and James was about 5feet away going, “Thom, Thom,
Thom can I have a photograph with you?” Thom turned round and looked at him
weirdly and just went “no” and walked off. We were all sniggering!
T- Then, at Glastonbury we were sat
round the campfire late at night.The whole day after we played, James had just
f****d off, schmoozing about and I kept trying to talk to him and he’d just be
like “yeah, yeah”. We were sitting around this fire at like 3am and I saw Thom
Yorke walk past, off to clean his teeth before going to bed. I was saying
“James, James” and he went “yeah, yeah, alright, I’m talking to someone else”
kind of thing. So I just sat there with a smile on my face watching Thom Yorke
walk into the hazy distance and then I told him after!
R- Comedy encounters with Thom Yorke!
The most serious man in music and it’s all ridiculous, our encounters with him…
T- Brushing his teeth and having his
dinner.
And here's what happened when Pulled Apart By Horses took to the stage...
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| Bassist Rob |
By the time Pulled Apart By Horses [PABH] took to the stage down
here in Manchester ’s Club Academy
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| Tom on stage in Manchester |
Opening with “I Punched A Lion In The Throat”, the Leeds quartet come out at a furious pace: lead singer, Tom, teasing
the zealous crowd by lurching over the barrier and into their hands. Mixing the
old alongside the new, “Wolf Hand” bursts through with its catchy opening
riffs which break into; “When I was a kid, I was a dick. And nothing changes”. Tom
tells of the band’s motto for this tour- “Shake Off The Curse”: the heavy,
rhythmic song is followed by the more erratic “V.E.N.O.M”- the band’s catchy
and most recent single.
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| Pulled Apart By Horses |
“Are you guys cold or warm? It feels like a f*****g arctic
tundra in here”, Tom sarcastically announces as he and the rest of the band are
reduced to taking their soaking T-shirts off. Old B-side “E=MC Hammer” spurs
the crowd into a whirlwind as the song regales us with tales of riding the
mammoth! The security have their work cut out as the crowd throw themselves up
and one by one surf over the barrier. PABH are relentless and energetic and, as
much as they give, their fans here tonight give back in equal measure. “I’m
constantly getting pissed on by the ceiling” announces Tom, as the temperature
rises and the ceiling drips on the entire band and crowd. The show is brash,
it’s messy, it’s sweaty; everything it should be; we wouldn't expect anything
less, and neither do PABH.
“Frankie and The Heartsrings” who had been supporting
the “Kaiser Chiefs” next door even put in an appearance to rock out in the
crowd. The vigorous and epic “High Five, Swan Dive, Nose Dive” allows the crowd
to gain a second surge of energy, proving that the four Leeds guys have a loyal
following, and one which is only sure to grow.
