Tough Love - Pulled Apart By Horses

Recently, I bought a new pair of headphones. A treat to myself, I thought. Little did I know that less than I week later I’d be reviewing the Pulled Apart By Horses record, and that this would result in my new Most Cherished Possession almost blowing my brains out. Tough Love is the follow-up to the Leeds four-piece’s eponymous 2010 debut, and there is a real, tangible excitement from the band about their latest effort: having bumped into guitarist James Brown at a Les Savy Fav gig, he told me they’ve been really excited about the release for a long time, and bassist Rob Lee recently told the NME “every song on the album has its own personality and really stands on its own”. Exciting, then. But has sharing a stage with Muse and a waning Biffy Clyro added a touch of star quality or detracted from the frenetic energy and raw power the band are known for?

Lead single and album opener V.E.N.O.M is everything you’d expect a PABH track to be: loud, riff-heavy and revolving around a chorus that’s catchy enough to have you screaming along by the end of the first listen. The band described it as a bridging track, and it’s as quintessentially them as Tough Love gets. Sure, there are PABH hallmarks stamped all over the place: technically brilliant but deliciously heavy riffs, amusing song titles (I mean, Bromance Ain’t Dead isn’t exactly Meat Balloon, but maybe that’s for the best), gratuitous discussion of balls (see V.E.N.O.M) and the uncanny knack of harnessing the raw, primal energy of their live shows and focusing it into eleven frantic, eardrum-smashing tracks; but this is a more rounded, mature record than their debut, with better song-writing and more replay value than their first effort. It will undoubtedly be suggested that the album can slip into an enjoyable but ultimately jumbled mash of jagged riffs, crashing drums and screams and that not every track is as entirely individual as the band had hoped, but that would be doing a disservice to a record that marks the balance of youthful energy with a more assured approach that has come with the band’s maturity.

Tough Love is a balls-out 30 minute shot of earth-shattering power and testosterone, a lung-busting war cry against the increasingly bland UK indie rock scene, a vaccine against the Vaccines. Pulled Apart By Horses are on top of their game, and Tough Love is testament to that – even if it tries to give you an aneurysm.