Pulled Apart By Horses are one of Leeds’ best loved bands, and playing alongside The Cribs at their epic Millennium Square show tonight (July 22nd) isn’t the only exciting thing they have on their calendar: they’ve just finished a new album, too – as the band’s James Brown explains, from his local pub no less.
So – you’re playing The Cribs’ huge show in Leeds. How did you get involved?
The Jarman boys took us out on for a few gigs last year and we’ve known them for a while now being local lads and all that. We had such a good time playing with them on tour, big boy bonding. They mentioned something about a big Leeds show back in 2015 and we obviously said we’d be more than interested in joining them live again but didn’t really know what kind of a show it would be. Was so chuffed for them to hear it was going to be on Millennium Square though.
Have you played the Millennium Square before?
No, I reckon its the only place we haven’t played in Leeds now actually. I think it holds about 8,000 people or something crazy and I can’t think of a better setting for a rock gig out in the summer sun in the centre of Leeds. Getting quite giddy about this one already.
Do you have anything special planned for the gig? It sounds like it’s going to be an event to remember.
The past few months have been pretty intense for us, we’ve been working super hard and not had chance to think about it until the past couple of days. I’m sure we’ll inject some kind of surprise into it and we’ve definitely all agreed that we’ll play some new material at this show. Hands down the gig of the year in Leeds for 2016 this one.
How important to you think one-off events like this are for galvanising the Leeds music scene?
I think is a super important moment for The Cribs and Leeds, they’re one of the hardest working bands I know and they’ve been building towards being able to headline a gig this big for some time. For a band to remain relative and admired for well over ten years is a tremendous thing and the band and this show will inspire other local musicians, bands and artists for years to come.
You’ve also just finished your new album. Can you tell us anything about it?
We have indeed! The recording session ended a couple of days ago and we spent three weeks holed up in Sheffield with the wonderful Ross Orton. We’d been wanting to work with him for a long time now but we could never make it work in the past. The entire process has been much less pressured than the previous record and we’ve really found the adrenalin, vibe and excitement levels in creating this one have been totally off the scale. This record is the most exciting we’ve made so far and the energy in it is pretty constant and pounding. We can’t wait for people to hear it.
What’s been your biggest achievement with it?
For me it would have to be the sheer amount of time and energy we put into writing the material this time around. It can be pretty intense and extremely hard writing an album. It’s very easy to get bogged down in it leaving everyone feeling unconfident, but this time we cracked on until we found a wavelength and ended up in our lock-up pretty much every day we could get in until we were writing at our very best.
Can you let us in on any of the tracks included?
We don’t really want to give too much away, but a couple of tracks made it onto the record which we played last year at a few shows in Australia and also in the UK with The Cribs.