Pulled Apart By Horses / Tough Love

Pulled Apart By Horses
Tough Love
(Transgressive)
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Here’s some data. Pulled Apart By Horses have kidnapped Pixies producer Gil Norton to deliver on the promise set up by their already-impressive debut. The result is the sound of your adrenaline glands acquiring consciousness and milking themselves into a freakish state of excitement; it’s at least the best rock album of this year - and possibly the next too.

But why Dad, why? Well, listen to songs like songs like ‘Night of the Living’; shot through with catchy motifs, but violent and shocking enough to defibrillate your brain into a state of gibbering awe.

You'll need to be physically fit to enter the ring with this record: ‘Bromance Aint Dead’ feels like a dangerously pure strand of AC/DC being injected directly into your eyeballs, 'Give Me A Reason' takes one look at Bends-era Radiohead and slaps it down with a monstrously cinematic guitar solo, while 'Epic Myth' taps Frank Black's sleeping madman on the head until he awakes to realise he's locked in a cage with The Stooges, goes bananas, and mutilates everything in sight.

Indeed, singer Tom Hudson has developed the most shockingly ape-shit vocal persona since the Pixies breathed their first breath; he demands instantaneous action throughout, with the intensity of a cigar-chomping fireball. What’s more, his band have grown to a suitably awesome level of play; see the incredible 'Night Of The Living' for evidence of group and singer reaching a perfect peak, in unison, as one.
“Break down the walls and let’s go outside!” rants Tom on ‘Wildfire Smoke & Doom’. The man has said it all; Pulled Apart By Horses are singing along with the fifth dimension.