Pulled Apart By Horses’ main strength lies in the energy and impact of their ferocious live performances. Translating such feral energies from the stage and into the studio is an infamously tricky task and after being tipped by almost everyone everywhere to do something rather huge in the year 2010, their self-titled debut lands as one of the most hotly anticipated releases of the year. Can it live up to the hype?
Its got plenty of rough edges but a few scuffed battle scars are the kind of characterful flaws that gives albums some oxygen to breath. A Pulled Apart By Horses show is messy, sweaty and a whole lot of fun and it wouldn’t have felt right locking these songs up in a heavily produced, air tight padded cell.With a guitar sound all crunchy and smooth like a sabre toothed velcro tiger, the riffs fizz and crackle like 1,000 watt peanut butter in a static bath. From the low end, funky nose bleed bass lines bound through the fuzzy fray, crunching bones and taking names as the clattering drums batter the beat home. Vocally, the shrieks of Tom Hudson are rough, ready and hardly a threat to Pavarotti, but he kicks out the screeching howls that the music craves. Would someone crooning “I punched a lion in the throat” through your stereo really have the same effect?
Tracks-wise, the usual suspects are all here. Opener Back To The Fuck Yeah is its familiar super charged zombified surfer rock self along with the bruising, brawler The Crapsons. High Five, Swan Dive, Nose Dive’s tumbling choruses and sugar rush verses have been over clocked and sped up whilst the stomping, fist throwing I Punched A Lion In The Throat is as ferocious a party animal as ever. I’ve Got A Guestlist To Rory O’Hara’s Suicide, Get Off My Ghost Train and The Lighthouse all benefit from the enhanced production without any real reworkings but the usually frantic Meat Balloon feels slightly tempered and defanged, trading much of its brash biting venom for some beefed up guitar parts and losing its sting in the process.
Out of the newer tracks, Yeah Buddy sounds like the frankenstein love child between a summertime cock rock barbecue down the park and a Eurovision winning chorus whilst Moonlight Talons fuses its beating hardcore heart with a smokey, Queens Of The Stone Age desert rock growl to great effect. Curtain closer, Den Horn, is the grand, seven-and-a-half minute stoner finale that just keeps on coming. Think Godzilla covering Black Sabbath and you’re in the right company.
Pulled Apart By Horses’s self titled debut doesn’t reinvent the wheel or try to replace it with huge 20 inch rims. Instead, its a grit throated, streamlined lunge at your chest cavity, adrenaline shot in hand. Whether you block or flee its advances or not is your problem.
