Pulled Apart By Horses @ Swn 2012
It's one of the odd quirks of city music festivals that a venue can be empty one minute and then full to bursting the next and this is the case with PABH's set tonight, the crowd spills in to the room upstairs at Clwb Ifor Bach just before the band takes to the stage but the anticipation is still palpable and its clear that these boys are one of the weekend's highlights.
Pulled Apart By Horses are a party band, they rouse the audience on this first night at Swn into a moshing frenzy mere moments into their set and keep the momentum going for the duration. Their chunky riffed rock and roll tunes are tight and performed to perfection with all the favourites popping up (Yeah Buddy, High Five, Swan Dive, Nose Dive et al) - but in no way are they sterile straight from the album play-throughs, they inject tons of personality into the set and engage in relaxed banter with the audience.
One poor guy gets a bloody face from the pit during the set and they make sure he's OK before ploughing on. They save their most crowd pleasing tunes for the closing moments and top it off with a touch of crowd surfing/dangling off the lighting rig which goes down rather well and succeeds in whipping up those assembled even more until the whole place is moving. A quality set.