Live Review: PULLED APART BY HORSES - Tough Love

The follow up to their 2010 self-titled debut – that which garnered immediate attention with heavy riffing and the consequent chaotic live shows in support of it – Tough Love sees the Leeds four-piece enlisting Foo Fighters and Pixies producer Gil Norton to capture the racket.
Unlike their debut, where calamity was the name of the game, things have been toned down a touch here, perhaps as a result of Norton's touch. Though that pinch of restraint has given riffs room to breathe (room that's well deserved) as a nod to 'metal' and hard rock acts of old, like Sabbath and co., rears its head more frequently.
Shake Off The Curse is a grizzly bass-driven beast; Wildfire, Smoke And Doom is as angry as party tracks come before the psych-out outro and Give Me A Reason is meat and veg rock at its best. Closer Everything Dipped In Gold is the only way to finish an album such as this. The chromatic guitars attack themselves, the bass belches its way through minute after minute and when the chorus comes in – Tom Hudson's blitzing bark above Robert John Lee's stadium-sized clean vocals – the bitterness in the refrain “All my friends are dead to me!” puts a smile on your face while knocking the wind out of you.
With Tough Love, Pulled Apart By Horses barnstorm their way into that very select realm of rock bands – your Foo Fighters, The Bronx, later Queens Of The Stone Age, what have you – that don't do too much out of the ordinary, but are just too damn good for that to matter. Rock, as it should be.