INTERVIEW W/ PULLED APART BY HORSES FOLLOWING THE RELEASE OF THEIR NEW ALBUM "THE HAZE"

With the release of their brand NEW album "The Haze" we caught up with Pulled Apart by Horses in London to find out more about they’ve been up to since the release of their last record “Blood” in 2014. All the juicy details, new sounds and what the future holds for us eager fans. Catch what the boys had to say below. Pre-warning there’s a hella’ lot of love flying around for new drummer Tommy as he divulges info on his choice to use a cow bell on the new record …..

Don’t miss our ALBUM REVIEW for "The Haze" HERE.

Tell us a bit about the NEW album, what inspired it, how did the writing process unfold and any funny stories along the way?

Tom: We started writing a few years ago. It seems a bit weird saying that now but basically when Tommy joined we started jamming from there, not necessarily for the album but we were just starting to get into stuff, just letting whatever happen to know what would eventually stick.

Robert: I think it was important, having a new member, to work on new material, rather than just hiring someone to sort of go over what we did before. It’s not like we’ve been working on the new record for the last two years, we were still doing the old album campaign, doing loads of festivals and gigs. But we were always writing and coming up with new ideas alongside rehearsing and playing festivals.

So when Tommy came into the band was it quite natural process?

Band: We’ve known him for years. Since the beginning of the band we’ve been mates and we’ve always practiced together in the same rehersal studio.

Tommy: And I’d played drums with the band before. I was living with James at the time, he came into my room and was like ‘do you wanna play a gig for us tonight, we’re playing with Foals’ and I was like ‘yeh sure’, I thought he was joking. The next thing I knew I was on stage.

Robert: He was listening to the songs we were gunner play, and he was just practicing them by like tapping away on his knees, and when we got to the gig his knees were black and blue where he’d just been hammering his thighs for hours on end.

Tom: and the gig was ace! He was tighter than us.

Robert: I knew at that point I wanted you in the band.

“We’ve taken a little bit longer but we’ve done it the right way”

You’ve released three singles off the NEW album so far how would you say this work and the rest of the album varies from material you’ve released previously?

Tom: We’ve always been evolving and tastes change, so you’ll get obsessed with certain bands, and with this one, for me personally, its been more like psychedelic, cyber rock, and between us all a lot of Iggy Pop and David Bowie, its like something old and something new slapped together.

Robert: I think we’ve gone back to, with it feeling like a new band, that original, new found enthusiasm with this album. It’s been more about getting together in a room and jamming things out and seeing what works. I guess that’s how the first album was written, but as you start going down the line and you have other commitments with touring and stuff, for whatever reason, it tends to break off a bit and people go off and start writing chucks on their own, and then everyone bring things to practice and together you flesh out the chucks out as songs. This time round it was much more of a collaborative effort, where we were all in the room writing on everything.

*Que more Tommy love…

James: With Tommy joining us, it feels fresh again. The whole band feel like it’s fresh and new again. It was like Tommy injected a shot of adrenaline into the band and I think you can feel that in this new record.

Tom: I think we need to stop talking about Tommy so much!

What have you been up too since the release of your previous album ‘Blood’ back in 2014 and why is now the right time for the follow up record?

James: that’s a good question.

Tom: It’s just natural progression I guess.

James: When we started playing with Tommy we were still doing the festival season off the back of the last record, I think if we’d tried too, I think we could have written a record around that time. But I think we needed to become a live band, not band who write a record just for the sake of it. We needed to ease back into playing live with a new drummer, and then once that’s done, then it’s preparing yourself to go on to write a record.

Robert: It definitely takes time for it all to gel and to feel like a proper band.

James: Like Tom was saying, it was like a natural thing. Blood came out in 2014, and it’s now 2016, so we’ve taken a little bit longer but we’ve done it the right way. It would be a different record if we’d made it sooner or rushed it.

Tom: You can’t rush it.

Robert: As we were writing, songs kept getting better and ideas were getting better, we ended up collecting 20 songs and narrowed those down to the favorites which went onto the album.

“The Haze is something that you come through, you wake up out of it feeling energetic and enthusiastic about writing and playing again”

What’s the story behind your album title ‘The Haze’?

Tom: We already had the one track called ‘The Haze’ and we all thought that should totally be the first track to kick the album off.

Robert: It kinda sounds like a film title. It seems to encompass everything.

Tom: The lyrics in that song are kinda about waking up in the morning and that fuzziness, that cloud of uncertainty, that I have everyday and then coming out the other side.

Robert: We also, as a band, went through a transitional period, there were a lot of different changes. We took some time off without a management company, we didn’t have a record label at that point, we were looking for you know other options, ways of releasing it and then got a new drummer. That’s great in a lot of ways as it can really free you up quite a lot and there’s no pressure. But there’s also an uncertainty to it and you feel like you’re a bit bogged down in real life again.

Tom: But we didn’t wanna’ call the album ‘BOG’.

Tommy: I’d call it the bog with the eternal stench.

Robert: Although it tied in quite well with the psychedelic aspects of this album that we really wanted to include in the title, the other side of that is that, maybe The Haze is something that you come through, and you wake up out of, you feel sort of energetic and enthusiastic about writing and playing again.

What’s your favorite track on the album and why?

Tom: Mine changes every week, different ones stick out, or you forget about other ones here and there.

James: It’s a really hard question as we haven’t started touring it live yet. When we were playing some of the songs at shows last years with The Cribs, I remember at the time people were reacting really well to “Flashlads”, really getting into it. If people get really excited, that changes your opinion, and your like ‘I really like this’.

Tom: Yeah I think that “Flash Lads” might be my favourite at the moment. But then again ask me in a week and it’ll be completely different.

So, it sounds all lovely and harmonious at the moment but were there any artistic fall outs along the writing process?

James: No, not artistic fall outs. Just regular fall outs.

Tom: Where’s my pants.

James: Its weird but we really are all just good friends. Passive aggressive friends. We don’t really have fights.

Tom: It does get quite intense when your recording but there’s never any personal sense, everyone is just hyped up. When we were in with Ross, the Producer, he has his own slant on stuff, so your all just like chipping in, its more about passion, everyone is like ‘I’ve got this idea’, ‘no I’ve got this idea’.

James: It doesn’t matter who you record an album with, it’ll always be stressful.

Robert: If there are no intense moments, it would just be boring album. It’s more about how you deal with those situations and what comes out of that.

Tom: But then it’s that sort of situation, where things may get a bit awkward, or things may get a bit intense sometimes in the studio, the moment you leave it’s cool again.

James: There’s a lot of sexual tension. That’s about it.

Robert: I think it’s more about fear with me. I worry about what you’re thinking some of the time. I think the other thing with our band and our writing, and it will always be the way, is that it’s a collaboration and a team effort - it’s a diplomatic process. Sometimes that can be frustrating because if you want to keep that going sometimes you’ll have to let go of something, let go of your own ideas, in order to be able to keep working like that. You just learn when to bite your tongue, when you know you’re wrong about something and it’s important to let go of that for the overall progress of the tune. For the greater good!

"A couple of fuzz pedals and a cow bell!"

So we’ve spoken about how your sound has developed and how you’ve drawn inspiration from different influences but did you make any changes to the usual gear and tech when writing the The Haze i.e pedals, guitars, drum skins, cymbals etc.?

Robert: We’ve been collecting fuzz pedals. It does get to a point when you think are any of them any different or do they all just sound the same. Especially when you just put them all through each other and then it just sounds like white noise. That’s when you go really insane at that point.

Tom: On one song, a cheeky cow bell. I remember when Tommy recorded that. Ross, who we recorded with, is a drummer himself, so he takes the piss anyway, but he takes the piss even more out of Tommy’s drumming, ‘Whats Up Dude’ was written with a cow bell in it. I remember the point Tommy approached Ross and he was like ‘yeah, this one has a cow bell on it’, and he just looked at it like ‘you’re not coming in here with that’. He ripped the piss out of Tommy but then he was dead into it after. He was turning it up.

Tommy: I had to get him to turn it down.

James: Basically, a couple of fuzz pedals and a cow bell.

Your upcoming headline tour is fast approaching, will we see a setlist filled with predominantly tracks from the new album or will there be a bulk of your old classics chucked in there aswell?

James: Half and half. We wanted to get loads of the new tracks in.

Robert: We set the precedent that we wanted to get as much of the new album in as possible.

Tom: Just to be bold.

Robert: And to show how invested we are in this new album and going back to that atmosphere of when you first set out. It’s all exciting. And with it feeling like a new band, it’s important to get as much of the new stuff in the set list as possible.

Tom: But we’re still playing some old stuff as well.

James: You’ve got too. With blood, you know, when we toured that, we maybe had three of four of that album and we did a mix of what we could of the old stuff.

Robert: And I think that’s what’s been really interesting - songs off Blood and Tough Love, that at the time we would have considered as singles or stand out tracks from the albums - we kind of just don’t feel in the same way about those songs anymore. It’s quite therapeutic to just kind of let go of them and concentrate on the newer stuff and some of the old stuff we’ve forgotten about.

James: The first album will be on the set list.

Your latest music video for ‘Hotel Motivation’ see’s you waking up lots of unsettled hotel guests, tell us a bit about the thought process behind this and how was it shot?

Tom: It was supposed to be a reality T.V show.

Tommy: That would have been a better idea.

Robert: Sometimes we get really involved with the video concept, James and Tommy’s girlfriends work for a creative company, lords company. But with hotel motivation we let the director take full control.

Tom: Sometimes you don’t have the time.

James: So yeah it was Louis Cater who pitched the idea for that.

Robert: But the main thing for that was the location of it and he sent us on a few different options, and once we saw the images for that place,

Tom: Yeah it was really cool.

James: It was a vicarage.

Tom: It was really weird, every room was a different colour. You’d go in one room and it’d be like cool 70’s flower wallpaper and then a green toilet and a green sink. Each room had its own colour scheme, it was just bizarre.

James: total time warp.

Tom: It was just an awesome place. Like you walked in there and it was like you didn’t have to do anything with it.

“The whole song was inspired by not being able to write any lyrics for a song. It’s so ironic.”

You mention that the writing of Hotel Motivation was fueled by insomnia and listening to Iggy Pop’s discography on repeat, tell us more?

Tom: Well I sleep quite well actually, maybe too much, I’m a lazy bastard. It was more like a bit of writers block, that sort of thing. Doing the lyrics for Hotel Motivation, I had bits and bobs for it everywhere and it ended up that the whole song was inspired by not being able to write any lyrics for a song. It’s so ironic.

Tom: I was in my spare room at home which I’ve got set up with all my guitars, sat up at 2AM with a mic, just figuring little words out and phrases.

James: It’s hard for Tom sometimes, cause when we get into a writing process, there’s this point where we get into a flow and songs start coming out left, right and center and all of a sudden you’ve got 7 to 8 songs, that need lyrics and we’re like right Tom, go and do your homework.

Tom: It weren’t too bad with this one though. I’ve done it before, where there’s been like three tracks and I’ve been like shit. And I’m like what am I going to do.

Robert: In the past, as a front man and the lead singer it’s mainly Tom ideas lyrically, because he has got to be really invested in that to be able to put it out there and believe in what he’s singing. But there has been occasions where we have got involved, and other band members have written lyrics. But this time round, you could see Tom - it maybe hadn’t been as much pressure as it had been in the past - it was sort of flowing out of him this time round and he took ownership of it. It was good to be able to stand back and watch Tom really get into the lyrical process.

Tom: It was fun, like normally I’d get stressed out cause we’d think about music and then write the song and then after I’m like shit, I’ve gotta do that other bit where I write words but this time it was more together so it wasn’t as much pressure or whatever, obviously with the exception of Hotel Motivation.

There you have it guys and galz! All the dirt freshly served and dished for your eyes only, let us know what you think of the NEW album in the comments below or drop us a tweet at @therockwolf1. We showered PABH in gifts at the interview in London with a special edition print drawn by our in-house illustrator @joejcarter that you can see pictured below! These will be up for grabs on our merch store at some point in the near future if anyone is keen on grabbing one for their wall of poster glory! We'll be heading out to their gig at Scala in London later this month so keep your eyes open for that live review shortly after, hopefully we'll see some of you in the moshpit!