Interview: Pulled Apart By Horses talk mud, sweat and (lack of) beers

Pulled Apart By Horses, one of this year’s headliners at Dot to Dot, released their second album ‘Tough Love’ back in January and have been setting the live circuit alight with their thrilling blend of punk grunge rock.

With this year seeing them open the main stage at Leeds festival, we caught up with guitarist James Brown backstage at Dot to Dot to find out how the three day festival has been, talk European festivals and how they’ve managed to play Reading and Leeds five years in a row.

So here we are at Dot to Dot, how’s the weekend been so far?

It’s been really good, we didn’t really know what to expect. We were in Bristol in February but we haven’t been to Nottingham in ages so weren’t sure who’d show up! It always goes off like a firework in Manchester though.

So I believe, I have it on good authority your last Manchester gig well and truly went off?

It sure did! It was in Club Academy and just amazing. The security said they’d never seen sweat actually dripping from the ceiling before. Such a great atmosphere in there.

Do you think a few people were surprised to see you on this year’s D2D line-up given the rest of the acts?

Definitely. When we got sent through the line up, we were thinking "are we going to scare everyone off?". There’s a lot of quieter stuff on there, folk and shoe-gazey stuff. We’re here to liven it up I think.

Have you managed to catch any of the other acts across the three days?

Well Wavves were incredible last night, we’ve not seen them before, we weren’t really sure what to expect. They were just huge, massive. Pure Love which is the new project from ex-Gallows vocalist Frank Carter are also on the bill. Straight up rock and not as punk as you would think. Definitely worth a watch.

You’ve got a lot of festivals lined up over the coming months; this three day stint is good preparation right?

Yeah from now on every weekend I think we’ve got festivals. Festivals are like a completely different job to touring, this is like a little warm up I guess so we’re really glad we got asked to do it.

You’re back at Reading and Leeds Festival this year, opening the main stage. You must be looking forward to it?

It’s the 5th year in a row we’ve done the festival and we really didn’t think we’d get offered it this year, we just thought "they’re not going to ask us again". Then about three months ago we got an email saying “do you guys want to open Leeds festival?” and we were like "YES, yes we’ll do that, we don’t need money we’ll just do it". We always usually do the Friday at Reading when everyone’s really up for it and get to Leeds on the Sunday when everyone’s all hungover. This year it’s the other way around for once, it’s going to be awesome.

I saw you guys on the NME stage last year, there were so many people in that tent!

Yeah, we were backstage just waiting for the guitar tech to sort everything out thinking "right let’s just go on, there won’t be anyone here". We just didn’t think there would be. Then our manager came over and was like “yeah there’s 12 thousand people in the tent’”. We weren’t nervous and then we were like “fucking hell what’s going on?”

You’re notorious for your raucous live sets by now, do you think that’s helped you get so many fans?

Ha, well we get really excited really quickly and that’s what happens on stage. It’s all about the atmosphere. We seem to have been able to crossover in terms of fans and that – NME likes us a bit and then Kerrang! like us too.

You’re playing a fair few European festivals this year too, are you looking forward to getting across the water?

Yes we are, I can never remember the names and I can never pronounce the names! They’re totally different. Pukkelpop is in August and that’s one of the first we ever did. They’re very chilled out compared to the ones over here, they’re pretty dark! No-one gets angry, no-one gets in your way, there’s no fighting and everyone’s willing to help you. There’s also good food and drink which helps.

You released your second album Tough Love earlier this year. In past interviews you’ve always said that you never set out to do this as a job so to speak, you must be pretty happy with how far you’ve come?

Yes we were just pissing about at the start, the reason we’ve kept doing it is that it’s fun, we enjoy it, it’s honest and cool. The second album was terrifying at first, it’s your second album and like everyone else you’re like "oh god". We didn’t know what was going to happen when we went in to record it, we definitely didn’t expect it to do so well. We got some great reviews.

Preview the album and download four free live tracks here

You’re a very hands on band in terms of your input into things, is that something you pride yourselves on?

It’s all part of the band and being in the band. It’s not just about the music. All the ideas are really important to us. Every little part of it is us, all the artwork and design etc. Nothing is contrived. We hate stuff like that, you can tell straight away what’s honest and what’s not.

Now you’ve been doing the rounds a bit longer, would you say anything has changed in terms of how you go about things?

I’d say the only thing that has changed is touring. We’ve started concentrating more on where we go. With the first album we just played anything and everything we got offered. An email would come through from the booking agent and we just went "yeah", we just wanted to get out there. We’ve also learnt to play our instruments better, do exercises before we go on stage, that kind of thing. We’ve worked out what our limits are, what to do and what not to do. It was pretty mad with the first album, I don’t know how we managed it. I was looking at our old calendar online the other day and we had a three month stint of gigs with four days off, I don’t know how we did that looking back.

Don’t tell me PABH aren’t party animals on tour anymore though, don’t ruin the illusion James!

Well I don’t drink on tour anymore; last night was my first time drinking on tour in months. When I play, if I’m hungover it’s hard to move about and give my all. I’m getting a bit more grown up… older maybe!

Interview: Michelle Lloyd

See Pulled Apart by Horses news, events , videos and information

See upcoming festivals and buy tickets