Live Review: Pulled Apart By Horses- Welly.

Pulled Apart By Horses' last scheduled tour of the UK at the tail end of 2012 never happened,  pulled apart by unforseen circumstances. The trip was cancelled on a promise of "exciting things in the pipeline" so as we approached Spring 2014, a long time has passed with little news forthcoming. It is with a lot of excitement then, that a couple of hundred Hullensians find themselves in the Welly Club on a Sunday night awaiting PABH to make the short trip down the road from Leeds for this, the fourth stop on their tour of smaller venues in lesser visited towns.

Like the tour itself, the show starts on a lesser trodden path as the band launch into V.E.N.O.M. B-side PWR. Its singalong 'Hey Hey Heys!' and clap along rhythms give the small but lively crowd exactly what they've been waiting for; something to dance to, sing to and slam to. The energy bounces straight back to the stage; PABH are four very watchable whirlwinds. Sometimes you feel it's a shame singer Tom Hudson is also playing guitar. How would his natural energy explode without the anchor of the mic stand? Early single Meat Balloon follows and as Hull continues to lap up it's awesome, radical and totally bodacious chorus, we realise that thankfully, this isn't one of those pre-new album shows where the favourites are eschewed in favour of an overload of unfamiliar newbies.

When the newbies hit though, it doesn't affect the energy one iota. The first of them to be aired, Hot Squash, is a stunner.  If we lived in a time where the youngsters were loving guitars en masse, it would be number one this summer for sure  A stadium filling pop chorus worthy of the Foo Fighters, but retaining a hard hard edge, it is going to be very interesting to hear how it translates to the studio. The new songs are slowly unveiled through the night and there is a contrast between them and the older material; the accessibility creeping into Pulled Apart By Horses' songwriting. The stop start structure of the tracks from their self titled debut just isn't there any more. Hot Squash and Wild Fire are both fast, full of energy. Grim Deal may slow down the pace, but it's stoner grunge-with-a-groove is still as unrelenting. The Pixies may continue to crap on their own legacy, but PABH take their loud-quiet-loud influence and transform it into loud-louder-loud. Yes boys and girls, subtlety, panache and crossover appeal can be achieved without sacrificing volume and energy.

The set enters the final stretch, and Hudson is standing on a table on the edge of the crowd looking out over them and not missing a note of High Five, Swan Dive, Nose Dive.  Whilst this is happening it springs to mind just how goddam young the band look. Guitarist James Brown and bassist Robert Lee inparticular look barely old enough to be allowed an 18+ stamp as they entered Welly tonight, but whether that's how old they actually are, or just their youthful energy playing tricks of the mind, who knows. An hour of stage time has passed once epic set closer Den Horn winds up, but both crowd and band are still feeling that energy in every chord, just like they were an hour ago. A more lively rock show you could not wish to see.

Pulled Apart By Horses soon to be announced third album could be the one to break them out, indeed should be the one to break them out. As fantastic a venue as Welly is, there's just no justice in a world where Coldplay are playing the Royal Albert Hall as an 'intimate' warm up show and the infinitely more exciting PABH can't quite sell out tonight for theirs. It would be only what they deserve if  the next time they announce a tour of much bigger venues those unforeseen circumstances don't show their head again.

Pulled Apart By Horses are giving away a free live download of I Punched A Lion In The Throat. Grab it here...

And there's still plenty of dates left on this very tour...

April
30 Oxford Art Bar

May
01 Norwich Epic Studios
02 Stoke Sugarmill
03 Leeds Live at Leeds
04 York YO1 Festival
06 May Cambridge Portland Arms
07 Aldershot West End Centre
08 Kingston New Slang @ McClusky's
09 Brighton The Great Eascape
10 Southampton Cellar
12 Exeter Cavern
13 Plymouth White Rabbit
14 Bath Moles
15 Cardiff The Globe

The Tuts- Time To Move On.

When I saw The Tuts live pretty much a year ago to this day my thoughts on Twitter afterwards were "Riot Grrrl if Riot Grrrl were invented somewhere just inside the North Circular." They were an explosion of far-from-virtuoso rock and roll dance punk performed by three proud feminists, who had as much of a blast dancing in the crowd to Kate Nash afterwards as they did during their own support set. Charisma by the bucket load, the crowd ate out of their hands.

A year later it seems that comment, meant as big praise at the time, was damning them with faint praise. New EP 'Time To Move On' shows the trio have done just that. Lead off track Worry Warrior keeps that rock and roll dance sensibility from last year, but showcases a pop vocal reminiscent of Lily Allen mixed in with the punk ethos. If you, like me, have thought that since her comeback Ms Allen has lost her edge, releasing sentimental pap and damp squibs one after the other, this is the track for you.

It's followed by a rendition of long time Tuts favourite Dump Your Boyfriend, and it's a shrewd move to include a live in the studio rendition as opposed to something more polished. Dump Your Boyfriend is a harsh punk ode to a shitty boyfriend and the 'safety blanket' of a relationship, no wonder how crap it is. It's a message us boys should heed as well. That message would have lost something in a glossy production, and  the tune is there as strong as it is onstage, the chorus' duelling vocals buried under a satisfying power trio crunch.

The quality keeps up during the EPs latter half too. No saving of quality tracks and filling up with throwaway B-sides here. Loving It is a one and a half minute smash of Tarantino soundtrack worthy twist rhythms. 1-2-3 brings to mind The Pipettes covering Symposium, which would be just about the most beautiful thing that could ever happen in music. The EP rounds off with a remix of Worry Warrior, all dubstep rhythms and autotuned vocal. It shows the original tracks strength that it doesn't just fit into this format but excels, it could be all over Channel U or whichever the current hip channel is with the kids right now. A wonderful genre clash highlighting The Tuts songwriting ability. 

Quite simply, 'Time To Move On' is an EP that shows how much the band have leapt forward from an already strong position a year ago. All the positives that oozed from the live show and the earlier recorded work is there, but moreso. It's poppier, it's punkier, it's more aggressive and it's just better all around.  Time to move on from whatever you're doing and listen. Now.

 The Tuts 'Time To Move On' is available from their Bandcamp Page  now.

Classic Cover- Jimmy Eat World and the Greatest Cover Version Ever.

Nuance. A subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression, or sound. In 1996, The Prodigy unleashed their biggest beast, a number one hit, still an anthem today. Firestarter. A song which it would be hard to think was capable of displaying nuance. That is until five years later, when hidden away on the B-side to their cover of Wham's Last Christmas, Jimmy Eat World had a go at it. 

From being a three minute punk-dance blast, it became a six and a half minute emo-cresendo. If you sit and listen, really listen, you realise they've managed it whilst keeping every recogniseable part of the track in tact, musically and emotionally. The guitar riffs are there, the tune is there, the passion is there. The aggression is there, they're just making you wait four minutes for it, not spunking it all over the place with the opening blast. Listening to this, it's barely noticeable how the track has built from a delicate cry to a tower of feedback, the only hint of what came before a strummed acoustic beneath. Constantly changing, building a growing, an art in nuance as the subtle shades of sound pass you by. 

This is, in my opinion, the greatest cover version ever performed. After a couple of weeks infrequent blogging due to problems with internet connections, I wanted to bring the cover version back with a real blast this week. What do you think? Is this the greatest cover version of all time? What would your nomination be?

The 1996 Britpop Mixtape.

Radio One are broadcasting a special series of shows at the moment, celebrating 20 years of Britpop. No-one can deny that twenty years ago was when the scene really hit its stride. Blur, Oasis, Suede all coming to prominence, Pulp slowly breaking the glass ceiling after several albums of toil, Elastica representing the girls. These are the bands the public remember and the bands that shaped the charts for the next two years until The Spice Girls Wannabe appeared in June '96, signalling Britpop's end.

As a massive music fan, however, it wasn't the Britpop of '94 that helped shaped my musical taste for years to come. I appreciate it all, but it's rare now I'll choose to listen to Oasis, Blur or the others from that era. Given two years to grow, the Britpop of 1996 was a much more interesting place, a much more varied sound, and a much more enjoyable thing.  Here's ten songs and events that made 1996, for me, the vintage year of Britpop...

1. THREE LIONS



Oasis may have been the flag waving, balls-out Union Jack guitar playing representation of Britpop, but in terms of musicians capturing a moment, and uniting a country, nothing did it better than this. OK, it may only represent a part of Britain, but it's still wheeled out every few years as we hope and prey that the 30 (now 48) years of hurt may come to an end. The Lightning Seeds may have enjoyed a medium amount of success, but they deserved more. Gimmicky and tied to an event it may be, but it gave them their moment in the spotlight, and their place amongst Britpop's greats.

2. THE TRAINSPOTTING SOUNDTRACK

Scotland's place in 1996's cultural lore was secured by a group of actors and a director at that time not amongst the elite. How times have changed, as Danny Boyle, Ewan McGregor and Johnny Lee Miller and co win oscars, step into the shoes of legendary Star Wars actors, and do the best Sherlock Holmes ever respectively. The soundtrack had many gems old and new, but none better than Pulp's Mile End. From the first notes, recalling the Clockwork Orange soundtrack, Jarvis brought to life an East London that may have smelt of piss, but was proud of it's heritage.

3. THREE NORTHERN IRISH TEENAGERS GAVE BRITPOP A KICK UP THE ARSE


Ash were mere kids when they recorded and released their debut record, '1977' in May 1996. It was heavier than most Britpop, but also brought with it a childlike innocence missing from the scene since the Blur Vs Oasis wars of the previous year. Still going today, with no hiatus in the middle, no acrimony, and still a vital part of the United Kingdom music scene. It's difficult to imagine a lot of classic British rock albums of the last 20 years existing without Ash,  Hundred Reason's 'Ideas About Our Station'  for example.

4. SLEEPER HIT THEIR STRIDE


Louise Wener's Sleeper were the butt of many jokes, the term Sleeperbloke inparticular becoming a well known derogatory term for invisible guys backing a female indie singer. So when their second record 'The It Girl' was released on the same day as Ash's debut it became unfairly maligned, and has been for nearly twenty years. The first, 'Smart' was a fun pop record, but Louise's songwriting and skill as a lyricist came of age in '96. Single What Do I Do Now? the story of a couple falling apart reaches a peak in the last pleading verse as it weaves its narrative with an honest fervour


5. THE BAND LUMPED IN WITH BRITPOP THAT HAVE GONE ON TO BE SO MUCH MORE


Bis, famously, were the first unsigned band to appear on Top Of The Pops. Their lively, infectious Kandy Pop from the 'Secret Vampire Soundtrack' EP pushed into the top 30 on the back of the appearance. Many didn't enjoy it, writing it off as daft bubblegum pop, but over the course of their recently resurrected career, they proved adept at disco, electronica and everything else they turned their hand to.


6. THE FORGOTTEN CLASSIC


If you remember Good Intentions by Livingstone, well done. One of the gems of Britpop, I couldn't tell you if they did anything else, or achieved anything more. All I remember is a CD single with a rocket on the front. Where I've got it from I've no idea, and to be honest I'm amazed I found it on Youtube, although not in great quality and with lots of irrelevant pictures of vampires and skeletons.


7. THE BOO RADLEYS GO ROCK


Wake Up Boo quickly became very annoying, so it's not a surprise most people ignored the following album, C'Mon Kids. The title track itself is heavy, exciting, and full of attitude. This is what we really wanted Oasis to sound like, not the pansy-Beatles aping shite they released later in their career, isn't it?

8. BRITPOP EMBRACED OTHER INFLUENCES


Kula Shaker appeared with their debut record 'K' late in the year, and it went straight to number 1. The bands psychedelic sound and hippy look were different from anything else Britpop had thrown up so far, and they stood a mile above a lot of the other new Britpop bands of the era because of it.


9. THE LAST GREAT BRITPOP BAND WAS BORN


It was at the tail end of '96 that Mansun unleashed their greatest single, Wide Open Space, the album it appeared on 'Attack Of The Grey Lantern' following the next year. Out of everything here, Paul Draper and co sound the least of their time. This track could've released in '96, '99, 2002, today and it would still sound fresh and exciting. They were, and remain, the buffer between Britpop and the British indie bands of ten years later, the Kaiser Chiefs for example.


10. THE (FIRST) DEATH OF THE STONE ROSES

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There was always something hanging over British music in the early 90s. The influence of the Stone Roses. When they imploded at Reading 1996, Mani and Ian Brown the only remaining original members, what they'd do next, what they'd unleash on the world became less important. The last remaining great of the 80's may have underwhelmed with 'The Second Coming' but the fact they'd released that first record meant everyone was always on watch for their next move. Following this god awful performance, the fear of comparison to them didn't matter to anyone except The Seahorses. Ash even stole their pyro, using it at the end of their own set, or so the legend goes. The next generation took over now.

A Tribute To The Ultimate Warrior.

April 1st, 1990, Toronto, Canada. Hulk Hogan, The Ultimate Warrior. Sixty eight thousand people watched on in the arena, many more worldwide. Wrestlemania 6.

Two and a half years later, a thirteen year old boy sat in a front room in Kent. At that time, Toronto seeming like an unbridgeable distance, but the time since the event meant nothing, I was mesmerised. A recent convert to wrestling, I hadn't seen 'Mania 6 before. To make it up to me that we hadn't managed to get tickets to Summerslam '92, I was taken to Woolworths and was bought 'Manias 6 and 7, and twenty years plus later, the purple lightning design on those cases brings a sense of excitement to me more than any remastered DVD, any Blu-ray, any watch when you like WWE Network can. The show on the whole was one of those old school Wrestlemanias with seemingly hundreds of matches. 14, in reality, but compared to today's 7 or 8 on a show an hour longer, it was loads. Of course, that meant the time of the matches suffered, but what drew me in was the spectacle, just how COOL everyone was. The Hart Foundation destroying the Bolsheviks in nineteen seconds! AMAZING! The guy who was so rich he had HIS OWN TITLE! BRILLIANT! The WWF I'd watched up until now was great, but it wasn't like this. The wrestling I'd watched up until now was good, but this was something else.

But all the matches that came before paled in comparison. When Hogan and Warrior stepped into the ring together, something magical happened. Now, with a lot more experience of being a wrestling fan behind me, I know these two were limited in the ring. But that didn't matter. The charisma didn't ooze out of them, it shone. It filled the arena, past it's walls, out of the city limits of Toronto, through not just space, but time as well, to England in the year 1992. The match was more than double the length of anything else on the card. They fought for over 20 minutes! They kicked out of each others finishers! NO-ONE KICKS OUT AFTER A LEG DROP! To me, this was the match that made me fall in love with the sport. No chain wrestling, no spring dives out of the ring, no bodies being put to ridiculous lengths to entertain. Even without the benefit of me seeing months and months of build up, the match in isolation told me a story, and when the victor, The Ultimate Warrior stood holding two titles at the end of the night, well, he out cooled everything else on that card, and pretty much everything I'd seen up to that point in my life.

In my opinion, that match is the template that every Wrestlemania great is now built on. The longest match on a Wrestlemania card to that point by over five minutes, the longest until the iron man match between Hart and Michaels at Wrestlemania 12. It's in that 20-30 minute bracket is where all the classics now sit. No need for a bad guy, this was for honour, paving the storyline path for the Undertaker vs Michaels matches from 'Manias 25 and 26. And for me, it showed me exactly what there was to love about wrestling. In 2014, I love a good pure wrestling match between two masters of the craft as much as the next fan, but that's not what draws me back time and again. What draws me back is the stories, the showmanship, the entertainment, and it was this match that really cemented to me how it should be done. The first 'Mania I ever saw, 8, saw the The Ultimate Warrior make his return. When I watched this, and 'Mania 7 afterwards, and I saw his retirement match with Randy Savage, I realised why it was such a big deal. This guy was the best. His work at Wrestlemanias 6, 7 and 8 made a lifelong fan of me. He made me believe that in wrestling you will never know what will happen next, who will turn up when, or where the classics will happen.

Without him, on Sunday night, I wouldn't have been sat up until the middle of the night with my head in my hands as the ref's hand hit the mat for the third time, the next step in the Undertaker's near 25 year streak storyline. I wouldn't have been jumping around the house, pointing my hands in the air, silently mouthing yes, trying to let off the emotion of Daniel Bryan's near-year long battle for the title, trying not to wake the rest of the house. And I wouldn't be sat in a pub right now, trying to explain in words what the Ultimate Warrior meant to me in the most positive way possible, without speculating about the events of the last forty eight hours, and how his health looked on Raw this week. It's the most shocking death in wrestling for a long time, overshadowing anything that happened on Wrestlemania 30, or could happen on any storylined programming WWE ever puts its logo on.

Many times The Ultimate Warrior made his return to the WWE, only to be gone again soon after, but no one expected this. No one expected him to be gone for good 24 hours after his final appearance in a Raw ring. The fact you weren't always there, like Hogan, the fact you weren't always having one more match like Flair made your legend grow, your mystique burn brighter, and it makes the small body of work you left us with all the more important.  We may not have agreed with everything you ever said, heck, we didn't even always understand it, but the one last  look we had at the man behind the facepaint this week will make us miss you even more and your humility in forgiving those who fought to tarnish your legacy is your last lesson to us all.

Rest In Peace. And Thank you. 

Sunday (Monday) Classic Cover.... Nickelback, Kid Rock and Dimebag Darrell

Let's get this straight from the start. I'm not a fan of Nickelback at all. Like a lot of people, I find them bland and uninspiring. They have their OK moments. Burn It To The Ground for example fit's just right as the theme of WWE's Monday Night Raw but I wouldn't choose to put it on at home. But there's one thing in their back catalogue that I am happy to do just that; their version of Elton John's Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting. From the first note it adds a beef and brawn to a track that, despite it's classic status and catchy tune, has always sounded like it needed the kick up the arse it's title suggests.

But it gets even better when Kid Rock appears just after the minute mark. As soon as he stacattos "p-p-p-packed pretty tight in here tonight", the cover moves up a level. It stops being a great revision of world class songwriting and starts drawing images to mind, images of bikers, booze, and brawling in a tiny bar somewhere off a Texan highway. To me, it signifies America. A pretty good achievement for a Canadian band. Oh, and the solo is a Dimebag classic. That helps too.

Who should be in Nirvana 2K14?

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has a rule. A band or artist cannot become a member until twenty five years after the release of their debut album. With 'Bleach' just past that anniversary,and today marking twenty years since Kurt Cobain's death, it's not surprising Nirvana have been voted in at the first time of asking. In five days time, at the Barclay's Centre in Brooklyn, Kurt, Krist and Dave will be inducted by Michael Stipe of R.E.M.

Every band entering the hall of fame this year has confirmed they will be performing themselves, or what tribute will have the honour, with one noteable exception. Nirvana. We had our first hint who it would be when a few days ago, Krist Novoselic stated on Twitter "Been playing those @HalLeonardBooks bass tabs to get up to speed. Muscle memory is good too. #PracticeMakesPerfect @nirvana". It was easy not to get too excited by this, the tweet was posted on the first of April after all, but it wouldn't have been a very funny joke. The surviving members of Nirvana do have recent previous, performing for charity in 2012 alongside Paul McCartney. But they didn't perform any Nirvana tracks. What if they did decide that twenty years marked the point at which they were happy to take that step, to perform together again, as Nirvana?

Who would front the band? The frontrunner at the moment appears to be Stipe. Stipe was a close friend of Cobain's who, if rumours are to be believed, was collaborating with him on early demos for the fourth Nirvana LP at the time of his suicide. Stipe would be able to pull off Kurt's occasional incoherent mumble was aplomb. He was the instigator of the art in American Alternative rock. But he couldn't be trusted with the raw, animal screams and howls that Kurt was known for. Stipe is one of the greatest frontmen of all time, charismatic and engaging with an audience like no one else, but he doesn't have the versatility to switch gears from About A Girl to Teen Spirit to Heart Shaped Box, for example.

There's only one option, surely. One of the two men being inducted alongside Kurt, Dave Grohl. Not everyone would be happy with that option for sure. It would be easy to say that he was trying to assert himself as the bigger name than his former bandmate after twenty years, or that he was making himself out to be a bigger part of the bands history than he was. Yet in terms of the being one of the biggest names in rock today, with the status worthy of fronting Nirvana, who else wouldn't feel shoehorned in somehow? He was the only other man trusted with fronting Nirvana whilst Kurt was alive, on B-side Marigold, so why should that be any different in death?



His vocal versatility is up there. He's got a soft, delicate voice when he needs, as witnessed on many Foo Fighters hit, but look at early B-side Podunk, or White Limo from latest album Wasting Light. He can do the scream too, and it's a scream with attitude and feeling, not a by the numbers hardcore diatribe. With his confidence as a vocalist and frontman having visibly grown in public over the past two decades, Dave could pull it off, crucially, without it turning into a Kurt tribute act. That just leaves the drumming question.

If Dave's up front, who takes the stool? Chad Channing could, and he'd be the obvious choice, being the only other person to drum on a Nirvana LP. Like Stipe though, it's unlikely he'd have the chops to make it believable. He may have been a great choice for the early, basic, punky sounds of 'Bleach', but when it comes to the hits, he just doesn't have the raw power to push along what became one the greatest rock bands in the world. Plus he's already made it known he won't be present. Here's a controversial one. How about Taylor Hawkins? Grohl often calls the Foo Fighters drummer his little brother, and having witnessed the drum battles the two perform live, he is every inch the equal of his more revered band leader behind the kit. Whilst Grohl would be the man stepping into Kurt's shoes, whoever drums would be the man new to the band, the man whose induction would not be into the hall of fame, but into the biggest rock band of all time. Hawkins has the presence for that, having performed on some of the grandest stages in the world with its most revered names.

Some say the Nirvana legacy should never be touched again; left well alone, but there'd be a symmetry to this line up that would be somewhat beautiful to see. Exactly half-Nirvana, half-Foos, it would be an eye to the past AND to the future. Grohl wouldn't be the name he is now had he not joined Nirvana. Scream and Dain Bramage were far from commercial, further from successful. By Grohl fronting Nirvana we would be celebrating not just Kurt Cobain's music, but the influence he had on the rock music of the following twenty years, the fact a whole generation, and now that generations children are still soaking up his music, and those that followed on in style, attitude and successes.