A name that should need no introduction to most, Pulled Apart By Horses are less a gang and more one big f*cked-up dysfunctional family. The Leeds quartet are a tightly-knit rock band who make music that thrills and menaces, their songs armed with suckerpunch riffs and zinging choruses.
They formed in 2008 from the remnants of various bands in Leeds, and since then have existed in their own chaotic ecosystem, embarking on relentless tours around the world and stopping only to make 2010's punkily infectious self-titled debut Pulled Apart By Horses and its snarling 2012 follow-up Tough Love produced by Gil Norton (Pixies,Foo Fighters).
Everything the band have done has been drenched in a sense of youthful recklessness, of all-or-nothing ardour. With their third album, Blood, they took things a step forward with wider musical and lyrical themes, embracing their love of psychedelic cinema and developing as a band whilst retaining the thrilling “Horses” sound.
But life doesn’t come with a user manual. Amid the constant noise, clamour and confusion of the Information Age, sometimes—as with much of the technology which surrounds us—human beings work best after simply being switched off, unplugged, reconnected and switched back on again, or, more accurately, the band felt a simple desire to fall in love all over again with the pure joy of making music.
“Our musical tastes change monthly, never mind over the course of the years, so we are never going to be the kind of band who’d do the same album every time,” says vocalist Tom Hudson of their evolution. “We’ve always been that band that are ‘too heavy for the indie kids, and too indie for the heavy kids’ in industry terms, but it’s quite cool that people don’t really know where to put us, because it means no-one can easily slap a genre name upon us. Now we have the freedom to just be who we are.”
With the trials and tribulations of their critically acclaimed fourth album The Haze behind them, Pulled Apart By Horses have emphatically returned, and are approaching 2021 with fresh perspectives, open minds, and a flurry of creativity—writing new songs, defining their sound, and wrestling back control of their own artistic process.