James Brown of Pulled Apart By Horses was kind enough to chat with us about new album Blood and more.
1. Hey James, how are you?
Very bloody well, thank you kindly! We’ve just returned from a wee jaunt of festivals in Holland and Portugal which were totally amazing fun.
2. What can we expect from Blood? We are crushing hard on the new singles so far.
It’s the evolution of the band I suppose. It isn’t a massive departure, but you can very much hear we’ve tried to do a few things a little differently and experiment with sounds.
We spent a hell of a lot of time on this record compared to the previous two and I think you can hear the shift in the writing and songs this time around.
3. Are you taking the album in a different direction at all and has there been any main sources of inspiration for it?
A few people have already begun saying that we’re taking things in a new direction and I can see why, but we haven’t binned off guitars for synths or anything too extreme. Tom & Rob really stepped things up in the vocal department this time around and we also stripped back some of the songs guitar wise when we began recording them.
Inspiration wise, I’d been listening to some early Pavement records around the time of writing this album and was enjoying experimenting with cleaner picked guitar arpeggios to walls of white noise fuzz inspired by Sonic Youth records.
4. That is some seriously awesome artwork for the new album. Who was behind it?
A fantastic photographer called Ricky Adam captured this shot for us in Leeds. It kind of happened out of the blue in the stairwell of a new venue in Leeds called the Belgrave Music Hall, after we saw the shot we kind of guessed that it would become the album cover.
Tom & Rob do all of our artwork and they had this vision of 1970’s style records already in their heads before we got the shot, so after a few weeks of playing around with the image the cover was born. We love it!
5. Do you think much has changed from the young upstarts who punched lions in the throat to where you are at now?
A few things have certainly changed work wise, but we started this band to enjoy it and we all still do.
The main change was moving up stages and seeing audiences grow, but that hasn’t changed us as people, it’s just a different working environment to playing pubs and toilets.
6. What’s been the best gig of your year so far?
Last weekend we played Super Rock festival in Lisbon, the stage didn’t have any roofing and after 30 minutes it began raining and we just kept playing because nobody left the stage in the audience. We eventually had to stop though as the rain got heavier and equipment began to fade and we began getting electric shocks! Was bonkers but proper fun!
7. And the worst?
Not had a bad show yet this year, good run so far. Although that does usually mean you are well due a shocker…
8. Are there any songs from Blood in particular that you can’t wait to play live?
‘Medium Rare‘ is a pretty exciting new song which is certainly a bit different from the usual PABH track. It’s kind of held back in the verses guitar wise and then steps up to a fat wall of guitars in the chorus.
‘Weird Weather‘ is another track we haven’t actually played live yet which is a bit of a departure for us, we’re gonna need a Fender Rhodes for that one though!
9. Who else should we be listening to right now?
The Wytches, Department-M, DZ Deathrays, Slaves, God Damn, Menace Beach, Turbowolf, Dinosaur Pile-Up, Stalking Horse and etc, etc, etc. I could keep going all day but I need a cig!
10. And finally, who would win in a bare knuckle boxing match between Postman Pat and Fireman Sam?
Postman Pat is a total pussy. Fireman Sam would annihilate him in the first round.
‘Lizard Baby’ is available on iTunes.’Blood’ is released on the September 1st, available for pre-order here.
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