Interviews

Pulled Apart By Horses

Modesty Blaise & Steven Potter 05/11/2010

Modesty Blaise & Steven Potter check in with perrenial GIITTV interviewees the Leeds quartet Pulled Apart By Horses. Off the back of a very successful year that has seen them emerge as one of the best loud party rock bands, PABH release 'Yeah Buddy' later this month one of the many stand-out cuts from their critically acclaimed debut album.

“It's a heavyweight song along formed from watching one too many body builders lifting beefy weights on youtube. Join in and pump some iron with us,” explains guitarist James Brown, tongue NOT firmly in cheek. He speaks the truth.


So Pulled Apart By horses are you named after the torture method?

Ummm yea bit of everything really, it reflects the music, it comes with the torture of realising you've named your and after a Tom Yorke song. To clarify on that point it was actually a Radiohead song first.

Basically, you have some of the best song names ever, how did you come-up with them?

“E=mc hammer” comes from just being pissed in my flat writing tunes. We constantly talk crap, so a lot of our songs come from that, when you're in a van absolutely bored out of your mind, you have to entertain yourself. When everyone in the room is laughing to the point of crying, that's what the song title is going to be. “Yeah Buddy” is from a Ronnie Coleman video on YouTube, it was like his catch phrase; we watched that video in the studio a lot.

So there's a lot of dispute over what genre you guys are in?What would you describe your music as?

Ummm I think we're just a rock band really, we're just some sort of white funk band trying to make it really, it's up to the people that listen to us, they can decide what it is, but we're a rock band really. Maybe Black Metal Pop or Rubbish Core. The guardian called us Dur Core, which we thought was pretty funny. I think they're saying we're thick. So, cheers guys.

Did you get into trouble with Fender or destroying their kit in the High Five video?

No, from their point of view I don't think they care if you smashed it up or ate it, as long as their guitars are in the video. When it's a Fender you can do whatever you want with it. We put some adverts out on the Internet saying have you got any gear that you don't use; we'll smash it up in our video. We got more stuff than we needed n the end! Jon got a guitar given to him through his Dad. It's a Fender Telecaster that I smashed the bass drum with and now my Dad has it.

A guy from a music college in London emailed us and said we've got 3 pianos in the music room that we don't use and you can have them if you like. We didn't get round to doing it but it would have been pretty fucking awesome.

How did you feel when you smashed up your Dad's guitar in the video?

I felt really bad, full of overwhelming guilt, I was just like “WHAT HAVE I DONE!?”

The guitar that I smashed was like a Sunburst Telecaster, thing. It was my first ever guitar that my Dad bought me for my 14th birthday. It was already broken and we'd taped it back together from where it was broken before so it looked like some sort of Frankenstein guitar. It's like putting it to bed in the video.

There's definitely a weird karma attached to musical instruments though, because when I smashed the bass up, I looked down at my hand and there was a fucking fret stuck in my hand. The bass actually bit me back!

He got a fucking guitar string in his ear before as well. I forgot there was a string hanging off the top, I just kneeled down and it went straight through my ear.

How do you view your success so far?

We don't know what we're doing. We're just doing what we do; we're not really famous. On this tour we've seen a big change but that's because off the radio and MTV and being spread about a bit more.

I hope it's because we've got a connection to our audience and fan base and they realise that we're pretty much the same as them.

The worst thing is bands that stay in their dressing room, don't talk to anyone and don't watch any other bands. We've played with a few bands that've just been disconnected with everything apart from being on stage, and it's shit really.

Second album, new material?

Have you got any? Do you want to help us? (Obviously we said yes!) I've just got a few Neil Diamond songs that I've reversed. The message was “I really like chicken just be careful of some takeaway places.”

We're writing it in December and we're going away for a week to a little farm in the Yorkshire dales to shut ourselves away. We'll record it beginning of the year hopefully.

We've all got different ideas and we'll just sit down and put them all together.

So there we are, the best interview I have ever conducted! Lovely, hilarious chaps. You should go out and buy their self-titled album because it's rad. Oh and buy it from an independent.


Pulled Apart By Horses are also set to support Foals on their UK tour as well as a headline appearance at The Garage in Islington on December 2nd.

Confirmed dates are as follows:

November//
5 // Carlisle, Brickyard (14+)
6 // Wakefield, The Hop (18+)
8 // Bury St Edmunds, Old Maltings (14+)
10 // Norwich, UEA (w/Foals)
11 // Lincoln, Engine Shed (w/Foals)
12 // London, Brixton Academy (w/Foals)
13// Derry, Nerve Centre (14+)
14 // Belfast, Auntie Annie's (18+)
15 // Dublin, Olympia (all ages)
16 // Cork, Cyprus Avenue (18+)
18 // Newcastle, Cluny (16+)
19 // Dundee, Hustler's (14+)
20 // Inverness, Ironworks (14+)
21 // Aberdeen, Drummonds (14+)
23 // Glasgow, Oran Mor (14+)
24 //Preston, 53 Degrees (16+)
25 // Wrexham, Central Station (14+)
26 // Stoke, Sugarmill (14+)
27 // Sheffield, Leadmill Steel Stage (14+)
29 // Leicester, University (14+)

December//
1 // Brighton, Audio (16+)
2 // London, Garage (14+)