Interview Josh Jones
Photography Ben Rayner

The last time I hung out with Leeds-based, very loud rock ‘n’ roll quartet Pulled Apart By Horses, they were sitting in The Lexington pub in North London, killing time between soundcheck and stage time. They were about to play their first London headline show, and had just been nominated for a Critics Choice Award for their performances at last summer’s festivals. They’d also just got back from supporting the mighty Dinosaur Jr. in Germany and had both the indie and the metal press chasing them left, right and center. But if it wasn’t for the fact that there was a queue of photographers and interviewers lining up behind us waiting for ’SUP and the guys to finish our pints, you’d have thought Tom Hudson (vocals and guitar), James Brown (lead guitar), Rob Lee (bass) and drummer Lee Vincent were just four mates making each other laugh while drinking. When we caught up with them again, they’d not changed a bit, except for a few more injuries.

Pulled Apart By Horses’ self-released Tour Trax EP (2009) is sold out nearly everywhere and they’re currently working on their first full-length album, set to be released later this year.

You’ve just done a nationwide tour with Biffy Clyro. What went on?
Lee: Biffy Clyro was awesome! There are no crazy rock ‘n’ roll stories unfortunately, but we did have a really good time. Our stage tech Jonty had an epic game of Jenga with our sometime-tour manager Pete and Chris from Manchester Orchestra. That is how rock ‘n’ roll we are.

What’s that video with all you lot dressed as sailors dancing about on a deserted ferry all about?
Lee: When faced with the prospect of an eight-hour ferry journey, Jonty said, ‘We should dress up as sailors.’ Not one of us thought that the guy we were staying with at the time was A) an employee of a fancy dress shop and B) not adverse to ‘liberating’ silly outfits in the name of tour amusement. What can I say? Cabin fever’s a bitch and sometimes you have to fight it any way you can.

It was pretty mental that you got to support Dinosaur Jr. in Germany wasn’t it? How was that?
Tom: It was fucking loud.
Rob: It was crazy.
Lee: It came about from a cancellation of another show and a last minute fill-in gig. It was incredible. We were quite scared, but the Germans seemed to like it. We only did one night with Dinosaur Jr. but played three shows out there.
James: It was nice to go out to someone we’d never played before and see how they would react to us. German people are mad.

What was the deal with you eating a banana for the audience, James?
James: Oh yeah! There was a lot of fruit at some of the shows, so I took it on stage with me and presented it to the crowd. At the Dinosaur Jr. show I thought we’d have to do something to win them over to us. I gave out some wine and I gave a lady some flowers, but her husband looked like he was going to pulverize me.
Rob: I had to go on the side of the stage where J Mascis’ amps were. He’s got three massive Marshall amp stacks, and I had the smallest little pissy amp next to it.

Tell us a bit more about Pulled Apart By Horses then. You’re still quite new to a lot of people’s ears.
Tom: We all got together in a really natural and random way really. These three were practicing and playing.
James: Tom split with his band Mother Vulpine, and I used to manage Tom’s old band and he was itching to do something.
Lee: It was one of these things where everything happened at the right time. People’s bands were finishing or going separate ways. It just came together with the intention of thrashing out some fast nasty songs.

You’re pretty rowdy on stage aren’t you? Didn’t you fuck your leg up pretty bad, James?
James: Yeah, that was pretty bad.
Tom: He also cut his head open at an early gig.

Are you rowdy, or just clumsy?
James: I think the word is ‘dickhead.’
Tom: I was looking at my body the other day and my elbow was really cut up from a gig. My knees were all black when I got in the bath.
James: After Germany I was looking at my legs and anyone passing me in the street, if I was wearing shorts, would think I was a smackhead. I had all these tiny little cuts all up them. It looked like I’d been injecting.

How many injuries and illnesses have you notched up between you in the last four months since I saw you last?
Lee: There have been a few black eyes, Rob dropped his bass cab on his finger and broke it – the finger, not the cab – on New Year’s Eve, and now James has an abscess on his chest. Apart from that we’re peachy.

Gross! What’s with you taking your clothes off during the shows too? Are you allergic to your washing powder?
Lee: I’ve got very sensitive skin!
Tom: It’s just hot on stage and we get pretty sweaty.
Rob: The first time we did it, it was because it was hot on stage and a few girls seemed to like it. So we figured we’d keep doing it.
Lee: I realized that taking it off halfway through when you’re already sweaty means that your T-shirt will stick to you, so I just take it off at the beginning to save time. Plus, I’ve spent a lot of money on tattoos so I want to show them off.

As well as going to Germany, you guys had a pretty good festival summer round the UK last year. I saw you at Latitude, you played Download, Truck and Reading and Leeds, plus got nominated for Critics Choice at the Festival Awards for your show at Turning Point.
Tom: Reading was really good.
James: That was weird – just to look out at the crowd, which had completely filled the tent, and then realize that there were people queuing outside the tent who were watching from there too. We were over capacity.
Tom: Truck Festival was awesome as well. We were playing in a massive barn that smelt like cow shit, but the sound and lights were epic. There was this monstrous gig going on in a cowshed.
James: All the festivals were great for us. What was the best was the crowd response we got from everybody.
Tom: There were a few where we didn’t know how we’d go down. We played Download and didn’t know if we were gonna get our heads kicked in or what, but we actually went down fucking well.
Lee: There was some band on after us called Eviserate or something and they were proper longhaired generic death metal group and they came on going ‘Fucking Pulled Apart By Horses – we’ll show you how to fucking do this.’
James: Errr… five K’s in Kerrang! mate. Have you ever kissed a girl, you dickhead?
Rob: I think it’s good that people don’t really know how to pigeonhole us so we can get booked for such different festivals. There are not many bands that can play Download and Latitude in the same year.
Lee: I think early on a lot of the indie press took notice of us and made it clear they liked us, so the rock and metal press ignored us for a while. But now that’s kind of picked up.
Tom: That is weird, actually. Sometimes we’ll get something in NME, and then another we’ll be in Kerrang! or Metal Hammer.

Your album’s penciled for release early 2010. Tell me all about it. What was it like recording it? What does it sound like? And don’t gimme no soundbytes.
Lee: We really wanted it to mirror our attitude to live performances so we did it in a very short amount of time with our friend James Kenosha. If we were given weeks on end to ponder over every little detail we thought we’d lose the essence of what excites us about PABH. It sounds big and it’s full of energy. We also left loads of between-takes nonsense in there to give it that live feel. We really dig it and we’re very critical of what we do so hopefully it’ll go down well.

You gonna conquer the world this year, then?
Lee (laughs): We’re gonna keep our goals realistic and aim to conquer Derby. We going on a European tour with Blood Red Shoes though and with any luck we’ll make some friends there.

A few days later, ‘SUP got this email:

Hi dude,

Lee