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Heaven for the Weather: Pulled Apart By Horses talk new members and next steps

Group are readying a Record Store Day live album, ‘One Night in Heaven’.

8th April 2015

It’s been a turbulent few months for Pulled Apart By Horses. A triumphant UK tour and a Christmas split with DZ Deathrays saw 2014 end on a high, but as February drew to a close, news emerged that the band’s drummer / founding member Lee Vincent was leaving the group for pastures new. However, with a string of festival shows, a Leeds homecoming and a live album out for RSD, Tom Hudson tells DIY why the band aren’t stopping.

“Obviously it’s weird, because we’re so used to seeing Lee’s tattooed face staring back at us,” Tom says about the band’s first show with their new drummer, “but we’ve been pals with Tommy (Davidson) for years. It wasn’t a massive gig; it was in a Tiki bar in Liverpool. It felt like the house parties we used to play a few years ago, it was a good one to break him in with really.”

The chemistry within the band is already there, built on years of friendship. “He was James’ best man at his wedding, so the transition was quite seamless,” but this isn’t the first time Tommy has sat behind the stool for Pulled Apart By Horses. “He’s played drums with us once before. We supported Foals in Kingston and it was the same day that Lee and his wife were expecting their daughter so Lee was on red alert. He couldn’t play the gig so Tommy learnt our whole set without ever having a practice with us. He was in the van the whole way down with his headphones on, playing on his knees. His legs were red raw by the time we got there.”

“It was a weird couple of months,” explains Tom, reflecting on 2015 so far. “Just trying to figure things out. We’ve got loads of other stuff going on with management, so it’s a transitional period. The thing is with Lee, everyone expects we’ve had an argument or a breakup but it’s all completely amicable. We just spoke to him at the beginning of the year and he just wants to move on to new things. We didn’t want to stop doing the band at all. We wanted to keep on going.”

‘One Night In Heaven’, a live album recorded at London’s Heaven on the final night of their UK tour last November, is being released for Record Store Day and captures the final gig Lee played with Pulled Apart By Horses. It draws a line under one that era while pushing them onto the next.

“The last tour we did, we recorded loads of our sets and the London show was a total banger. We said ‘Let’s get it out, lets do a vinyl’ and Paul Riddlesworth, who runs Too Pure Singles Club and released our second ever single, managed to turn it around really quickly,” explains Tom. “Record Store Day is important because there’s nothing better than holding a vinyl in front of you and seeing the artwork sleeve as it was intended. Flicking through the pages and getting into it is a lot more human than a bunch of mp3s on your iTunes. It’s really important to celebrate all the indie stores as well. Whenever we’re on tour, we always end up spending all our money in various record stores all over the UK.”

The thirteen song tracklist for ‘One Night In Heaven’ reads like a Pulled Apart By Horses ‘Greatest Hits’, and it highlights just how far the band have come from their scrappy beginnings. “It’s really cool to have (the newer material) because before we’d go 100 miles an hour and then be absolutely fucked after half an hour. The bigger you get, the longer you have to play for so it’s nice to have some songs that are heavy, but are slower to break things up a bit more. And it gives the crowd a bit of breather as well as us,” he laughs.

And as for the next chapter, Pulled Apart By Horses are already scribbling down ideas. “We’ve got festivals lined up, a homecoming in Leeds and we’re just starting to dip our toes into writing new stuff with Tommy. Just trying to get a vibe and establish where we want to go next. We’ve got one or two songs that we’ve been messing around with; we want to mix it up a bit more. The last album was a lot more progressive and we want to experiment with new sounds but also go back to the early days of having more riffs and just having more fun.”

Photo: Mark Howe. ‘One Night In Heaven’ is out on April 18th for Record Store Day via Transgressive/Too Pure Records. Pulled Apart By Horses will play a warm-up show at Live At Leeds (1st-4th May), where DIY is an official media partner. Tickets are on sale now. Visit diymag.com/presents for more information.

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