‘Evolve or die’, right?
It’s entirely possible to have a perfectly reasonable career by sticking to a proven formula, keeping your existing fans happy, but not really aiming for anything higher. Let’s be honest, though – the really special bands are the ones who do something a bit different with every record, keeping their sound fresh.
Leeds rockers Pulled Apart by Horses are a band that have certainly followed the ‘evolve’ route. Their debut, self-titled album, released back in 2010, was a quirky-and-jerky slice of raw alternative rock, weird and uncompromising in equal measure. It garnered the band a strong cult following very quickly.
Over the course of the next three records, the band gradually sanded down their rough edges, culminating in 2017’s The Haze, which really was a proper, straight-arrow rock record. The Haze succeeded in keeping most of their established fanbase happy, partly because there was just enough of the band’s original wildness in there, but mostly because it was really bloody good. The album reached number 12 in the UK album charts, which shows how successfully the band had managed to appeal to a wider audience.
With Reality Cheques, PABH have evolved again. This time, they are one guitarist lighter, with singer Tom Hudson having put down his guitar to focus on his vocals. The band themselves describe the record as their ‘most punk’ yet, leaner and more straightforward.
It sounds an interesting endeavour in theory, and given the band’s history of successful reinventions, it wouldn’t have been a surprise to see them pull it off. Early signs are promising, with opener ‘Pipe Dream’ providing a nice two minutes of almost Doors-y psych, exploding into a garage rock second half.
From here, though, the album descends into a surprisingly bland tunnel rather quickly, from which it never quite escapes. ‘First World Problems’ is intensely annoying, blighted by excessive repetition, while ‘Rinse and Repeat’ sounds like it is trying to be The Hives, but just isn’t interesting enough to pull it off. ‘Sleep In Your Grave’ is a fun two-minute blast, but not enough to shake the mediocrity around it.
‘Devil Inside’ opens the second half, and is easily the best song on the record, a stomping reminder of The Stooges at their best. Sadly, though, this again is a false dawn, as the album meanders towards its quite horrendous climax, the almost-impossibly dreary six minutes of ‘Fear of Missing Out’.
Bland. Mediocre. Dreary. These are not words that this author thought he would ever use to describe something created by Pulled Apart by Horses. How on earth did this happen? Certainly the production does the record no favours, being so clean in places as to remove any trace of interesting noise.
More significantly, though, the brevity of the album is telling. The Haze had twelve songs on it; Reality Cheques has only eight (should it even be described as an album if it only has eight songs?). Even at that length, it feels like it has run out of ideas. Ultimately, it just deviates from everything that Pulled Apart by Horses are good at – the wild, duelling guitars, the innovative musicianship, the quirky subject matter – and what is left just isn’t strong enough to compensate.
A timely lesson, then, that while evolution is (or can be) good, it is also important to recognise your strengths and not move completely away from who you are.
A rare misstep, from a (rightfully) much-loved band.
Reality Cheques is released on 30th September via Alcopop! Records.
