Longtime Yard Act fans could be easily forgiven for being frightened by frontman James Smith’s startling missive on the first track of their excellent third album. “I’ve got absolutely nothing new to say,” comes his proposition on the claustrophobic gloom of “Empty Pledges.”
But fear not. One of Britain’s most acerbic lyricists of recent years has not, in fact, found himself struggling to discover pastures new. “I would be back in Leeds after tour and bumping into old acquaintances who I hadn’t seen in the last four years,” he tells Rolling Stone UK, sitting down with bassist Ryan Needham in north London.
“They’d get into the pleasantries of small conversation, and I quickly realized that I found it quite confusing when I was talking to people who were aware that they’d watched me through the internet for four years. They’d say, ‘What have you been up to?’ and I’d say, ‘Nothing.’ Because it was almost too overwhelming to talk about.”
For a quick recap, when Yard Act released their debut album, The Overload, in 2022, the band’s blend of post-punk, jagged guitars, and tales of fictional everyday characters saw them bag a Mercury Prize nomination and even a famous fan in Elton John, who famously collaborated with the group on a reworking of the existential stand-out “100% Endurance.” Their pogoing second album, Where’s My Utopia, saw Smith reckoning with the cost of fame and allowed the band to play some of the biggest gigs of their career. All of which is to say, it’s a fair amount for anyone to reckon with.
Smith adds: “It’s a weird thing. I’d be in Leeds and look at my phone contacts and the first thing I’d do is call Ryan and hang out with him, despite doing that exact thing for the last six months on tour. I realized I’d got this bubble where everything else becomes alien and I did struggle with that. I’ve worked my way through it, but I wouldn’t want to talk to anyone else about what we’d been through. Because how do you possibly articulate that? It was a bizarre and kinda alienating experience.
“I’d say that the first record was about aspiration, the second was the realization and this is the aftermath,” Smith puts it. “This is dealing with the reality of realizing that success doesn’t really validate anything in your life, but in the same breath it’s a living and we get to do this full time. All the stuff we love: writing, recording, being together and playing together — I wouldn’t change that for the world. But my complexities and issues haven’t been solved by the success that I was so driven to achieve. This record is like waking up in the morning and being like, ‘OK, cool, that happened.’ But the world moves on. You’re still the same, but you’ve got a lot more baggage and if you wanna grow as a person you’re gonna have to look inwards because it’s not going to come from an outside source.”
It’s helpful, then, that their third record, You’re Gonna Need a Little Music, is their best yet. Lead single “Redeemer” is a dark and ferocious cacophony of noise, while the jolting title track feels like something that could soundtrack a disco during the end of days.
James Winstanley
“‘Redeemer’ felt like the biggest reset after Where’s My Utopia,” says Smith. “And it felt right because whenever [someone] thinks they’ve got me sussed, I like to do the opposite. I know it’s a slippery approach to life.”
Though recorded in Leeds, the album took on a transatlantic dimension too when the band headed to L.A. earlier this year to record with Justin Meldal-Johnsen, known for his work with the likes of Nine Inch Nails and Wolf Alice.
“That was the icing on the cake for this record,” says Smith. “We thought we’d had most of [it] written before then, but it was the first time we’d ever removed ourselves from any distractions or obligations. There was no childcare or relationships to balance. Even when we were recording the first album we were still going back to work. Having that cut off and being on the other side of the world was the glue that held this all together, I reckon.”
Needham adds: “You can get a bit hocus-pocussy about that stuff, but going in and doing a vocal take knowing you’ve got to do the school run in 45 minutes is tough. We’re not super flowery about this stuff and I like to think you can just crack on, but that separation can be really, really good.”
On the band’s debut album, Smith employed Graham the unscrupulous landlord as a constant feature in that set of songs as a framing device for the band’s razor-sharp look at British life. Though dialled down on this record, fans will still note the presence of Janey, described as an “old flame” on the twinkling, piano led “Janey Said.” The old flame here, Smith explains, is an inwards look at the cost of his own ambition.
“It’s that thing where I have a very ambitious streak in me and I live with this twin flame where I’m constantly battling my own ambition because it scares me, but I know that it also drives me and it’s what gives me new avenues in life to explore,” he says. “Part of me wants to be content, but there’s another part of me that knows I’d get bored if I was.
“I’m really trying to figure out, especially in reflection to the first two records, what the journey towards success looks like like. Because, you know, I’m not unhappy all the time, but that friction does exist, so how do I learn to live with that? Every world leader and every owner of every corporation is driven and look where that’s got us. So why is my drive somehow more plausible and acceptable?”
There are also gems that didn’t make the album, both note. If fans thought “Redeemer” heralded a new sound, they’ll be blown away by the unreleased “On Top,” which Smith hails for sounding like “our ‘Master of Puppets’ with double kick drum and me screaming over the top”, he says, namechecking the Metallica song.
James Winstanley
It’s also helped that the band is as close as ever. The jagged “Petroleum” on their second album homed in on the reality of what happened when Smith, burnt out from an intense tour schedule, dramatically turned on the crowd at a show in Bognor Regis, berating them for what he perceived as a lack of reaction. It could have broken lesser bands, both say, but this Leeds four-piece — completed by drummer Jay Russell and guitarist Sam Shipstone — are still tight at the start of an exciting new dawn.
“We talk constantly with each other, and that connection between band members is rarer than you think,” admits Needham. “I always like to have a nosy about in the backstage of festivals and see who’s sitting together and who’s not. You’d be surprised.”
“Early on, we realized there was no ego from anyone and although I was the mouthpiece of this band, no one had any envy of that,” adds Smith. “We silently agreed that if I took the brunt of it, it would travel further. But then every album’s been a slow undoing of that, and there’s less words on this album than the others. I’ve been able to step back a little. People are really invested in classic bands where every member is integral to it, and I think people are slowly realizing it’s not the ‘me’ show. I just pretended it was, because there needs to be a focal point at the start. But every album is more and more about us as a collective. And I consider that to be the sign of a great band.”
A great band, then, with some prolific backers in their corner, no less.
“We haven’t spoken to Elton for a while, but he said he wants to make a prog album with us,” admits Smith. “So, Elton, if you’re reading this, the prog album is still on the cards.”
This story was originally published by “Rolling Stone UK.”
