Offset Day Three// Better Late Than Never
As Pulled Apart By Horses took to the purple, monolith-like stage, singer Tom Hudson exclaimed ‘Hooray for good time keeping!’ Indeed, due to a slight overrun from Israeli loons Monotonix, and the obligatory time allocated to clear up the carnage left by the Tel Aviv punks’ crazy-mad-fun show earlier in the day, they are slightly late. But rather than launch a Guns ‘N’ Roses style tirade against the state of British music promoters or anything like that, the band just got on with it, and delivered their now standard spectacular live show.
Launching straight into habitué paramour “E=MC Hammer”, with its gargantuan closing riff and self-aggrandising vocal refrain, they never let up, combining good time libretto with crashing, great, disconsonant rawk riffs and a hell of a lot of jumping around. After a behind tempo rendition of “Back To The Fuck Yeah” came latest single “High Five, Swan Dive, Nose Dive”, its lazily strummed chord intro giving way to a fast paced thrasher of a song about high fives and ‘balls of fire’. Halfway through the song, the hurtling guitars took a breather; just enough time for guitarist James Brown to clamber to the top of the P.A, before the song picked itself back up again and came in heavier than ever with an ‘URRGH!’
“Get Off My Ghost Train” and “Yeah Buddy” saw the emergence of a large circle pit within the crowd, provoked by the band on stage, and Hudson abandoned his guitar, announced ‘This is my opportunity to see how many penises are in the crowd’, and dived headlong into the moshpit for “I’ve Got Guestlist To Rory O’Hara’s Suicide”. He eventually made his way back to the stage, but not before pausing to scream ‘Enjoy your fucking misery!’ in Noize’s face and boshing himself on the head with the mic a few times.
To close, they brought out the obvious yet perfect choice of “I Punched A Lion In The Throat”. Its semi-surrealist lyrics and its fragmented pentatonic riff coda (which seems to repeat itself ad nauseum, only adding to its ‘ultimate power’ as it goes) brought the feverish crowd to boiling point and took them over the edge. In a blaze of feedback and splashed water bottles, the band left the stage, sticking religiously to time constrictions but allowing their brand of exuberant rock-fun to shine and spill out over the edges. So, Pulled Apart By Horses: already one of our bands of the year, and quickly becoming one of our favourite bands full stop. And that’s saying something.
Words by Alex Nelson
Photos courtesy of Offset Festival
