Category: Yard Act

An occasional feature between now and mid-December, hopefully giving you time to put some records on your list to Santa.  It’s not a rundown by any stretch of the imagination, but simply a chance for me to mention a few albums that have brought me immense pleasure thanks to them being released in 2024.

Where’s My Utopia? – Yard Act

The difficult second album?   That’s certainly the view of quite a few folk who were mesmerised by The Overload, the 2022 debut album from Leeds-based indie rock-popsters, Yard Act but weren’t keen on the different direction taken by this year’s Where’s My Utopia?

Here’s the thing.   Many of the positive words written about Yard Act’s emergence centred on them being from a similar lineage to The Fall, and there’s certainly enough musically and lyrically on the debut to back that up.  But it does seem logical, given that Mark E Smith & co never rested on their laurels or sought to release two similar sounding records in a row, that Yard Act would go down a different road with the second album.

It’s not just the music which ended up changing.  James Smith‘s lyrics on this record reflect what has come with a fair bit of fame and a little bit of fortune, and there’s certainly no clear indication that he’s terribly happy about it all.

It’s always difficult, if not impossible, to listen to a band’s second album and compare it with what came before.  I made my mind up, very early on, that I would try and take things a bit differently with Where’s My Utopia? given the way the band were talking months ahead of it being released.  They had said that once the final shows around the promotion of The Overload were out of the way, it was going to be a whole new beginning.   As such, I tried, to look upon this as a debut and to take each song on its own merits without focussing on the past.

It wasn’t easy as I didn’t like the first advance single Dream Job which appeared in October 2023.  It felt too much in thrall to second-rate disco music.  Thankfully, the next single didn’t disappoint in any shape or form:-

Yard Act channelling their inner Beck.  It was also by now quite clear that at least one character in the video was following a developing story-line.

There would be two further advance singles, which again continued the storyline.

We Make Hits was a kind of throwback to the debut album, with its jarring and complicated sound.  It certainly wasn’t a conventional song to be released as a single, albeit it had a really catchy and infectious chorus.  And then came this:-

Poptastic stuff.  One that will get you up on the dancefloor when it gets aired at the indie disco with a chorus, courtesy of guest vocalist Katy T Pearson, that’s an absolute killer.  It’s only when you listen closely to the lyric, do you realise that it’s really quite dark and disturbing:-

No one needs to know about the burden that you’re smuggling
You dry your eyes at the gate to hide the struggling
The stories that you’re juggling
The fear you must be funnelling
Bury ’til you’re burrowing
Pain is such a funny thing

And to top it all off, there’s a spoken contribution at the end, consisting of lines written by Shakespeare for the doomed character of Macbeth, delivered by the acclaimed actor David Thewlis, who had appeared in the band’s video for 100% Endurance, the last single lifted from The Overload.  It all makes for something truly astonishing, and it’s up there among my favourite songs of the year.

In some ways, this all meant the actual release of Where’s My Utopia? on 1 March could have been an anti-climax.  Four advance singles with clever and expensive looking videos meant there were just seven new songs to take on board.  They weren’t perhaps as immediate as the singles, but most of them had a depth and quality that really benefit from just sitting back and taking them all in. Smith really bares his soul on a couple of them, one of which, Down By The Stream, reflects on an incident from his youth, which doesn’t show him up in a particularly good light.

Then there’s this….

mp3: Yard Act – Blackpool Illuminations

A seven-and-a-half minute epic story which takes in childhood, teenage debauchery and the worries and joys of being a new parent.  With an absolute killer and unexpected last line. Over a tune that shows just how different Yard Act are from all of their contemporaries.

In heaping all this praise on the album, I do have to say that in years to come, when both it and The Overload have been back on the shelf for a few years, I’ll likely find myself listening more to the debut, but that’s really down to just how consistently good The Overload is from start to end, while there’s a couple of moments on Where’s My Utopia? where it dips marginally.

Album #3 should be fascinating.

JC

I was away in Toronto while Glastonbury 2023 revealed itself. As such, I missed the extensive TV coverage that was broadcast by the BBC and I haven’t been inclined to use the red button facility for any catch-up that’s currently available and will be throughout most of July.

I did read about some of the happenings, via the Guardian’s coverage of the festival, not least the enthusiastic reaction to Rick Astley and Blossoms set of Smiths covers.  Fair play to the 80s pop icon for paying tribute to one of his favourite bands and for getting the packed crowd involved in a mass sing-a-long, and while I have no great desire to hear how it all sounded, I’m 100% certain that the musicians on the stage will have been more sympathetic to the originals than the lumpen efforts by the various musicians whom Morrissey has deployed during much of his solo career.

It seems that Elton John‘s set was well received, a show that is supposed to bring down his live career here in the UK. He’s since, just the other day, played his final ever gig in an arena in Sweden.

I’m not a huge fan of Elton’s music, but I do admire his longevity and ability to move with the times, and I can’t deny the fact that so much exposure via radio to his hits of the 70s means that I know just about all the words to many of his bangers.

He’s a big fan of Yard Act, one of the bands I latched onto last year, to the extent that he contributed piano and vocals to a re-recording of one of the outstanding tracks from their debut LP, with it being released on vinyl for Record Store Day 2023:-

mp3: Yard Act – 100% Endurance (feat. Elton John)

The b-side of the 7″, which was pressed on orange vinyl, was a cover of one of Elton’s best known songs, dating back to 1971, and the opening track of the album Madman Across The Water:-

mp3: Yard Act – Tiny Dancer

Enjoyable enough stuff, but not enough to make me want to seek out the original.

JC

Yard Act, from Leeds, are another new band that I’ve got all excited about in 2022.

James Smith (vocals), Ryan Needham (bass), Sam Shjipstone (guitar) and Jay Russell (drums) haven’t quite come from nowhere as they’ve all been in other bands previously.  But there’s something genuinely superb about their new collective which has made their debut album, The Overload, released back in January, as one of my most played records in the first half of 2022.

Most critics focus on Smith’s lyrics and delivery, which are full of humour and storytelling, often delivered in a spoken-style, covering a wide range of social and political issues from a left-wing perspective, but the band are incredibly tight and talented, which no doubt stems, at least in part, from the fact they aren’t new kids on the block.

There were a number of self-released EPs released in 2020 and 2021, the vinyl versions of which now go for eye-watering sums on the second-hand market.  Indeed, the band remain something of a DIY outfit as the debut album came out on their own ZEN F.C. imprint, but via a partnership with Island Records.

Most of the tracks have had some sort of release as a single, in digital form, with a number of wonderfully surreal promo videos featuring a cast of characters who pop up time and time again.   The final single, 100% Endurance, is the song which closes that album and its video features a wonderful turn from the actor David Thewliss.  YouTube can be your friend for all said videos.

The longest track on the album, however, was never released as a single.  I think it makes for a wonderful short story.

Yeah
He was the most handsome in a class of twenty-two
And he knew it early on so his confidence kept growing
By thirteen he had been with every girl deemed worth it
To be with in the village, two years either side of his birthday
He played football, boy, could he play
He played every single day and he still does
A scout from Crewe Alexandra came to watch him once
And they said that they were gonna be in touch

He was the captain of the team without ever asking to be
And without ever being told, that counts for a lot, still, believe it or not
Lo and behold, everyone fell in line behind the hair on his legs and hair on his lip
He was the-

He could smoke ten a day and still run faster
Than that whippet that could lap the racetrack rabbit
He could dabble in the snow, rubbing shoulders with the rabble
And still never ever touch upon a habit
At age sixteen, he made his choice to stay
And got a job selling houses in the village
Which by now had become such a desirable place to settle down
It was classed not as a village, but instead as a small town
(On the sunny, sunny side of the borough)
(You get two brown bins)

Fortunately, despite the influx of newcomers including, for the first time
A genuine authentic Italian restaurant run by a family of fantastic old school Neapolitans
He was still the best at football, and a most handsome man
Taking solace in that fact as his little world continued to expand

By the time he was twenty, he’d now been with all the girls deemed worth it in the village
Five years either side of his birthday
But it was time to settle down and no kiss had ever felt so electric
As the first he’d ever felt all those years ago
Though she had never strayed far, hemmed in by his shadow
The torches lining the path of her own dreams had been growing dimmer by the day and so
Faster than a dying star, she cashed in her chips and checked out
Settled for him and subsequently threw all her own ambitions away

A promotion followed, a mortgage, a marriage
A dog and children, a loft conversion
A dead dog, and a second home on the Costa del Sol
In the hopes of stoking the coals of two long-lost souls
Which comes first, counselling or keys in the bowl?
Put his own mother in a home
Got made redundant twice, never once was he on the dole

Light head, black spots on his vision, room spinning
Clutching the curtain waving from the window, they thought he was grinning
He was grimacing, begging them to notice him, twitching, notice no one is helping him
The grandkids waving through the rear windshield
As the big electric gate draws a line in between them
A fine, fine line between benign and malignant
So get yourself checked, book yourself an appointment
So get yourself checked, book yourself an appointment
So get yourself checked, book yourself an appointment
So get yourself checked, book yourself

The whole village and most of the town came out to mourn his end
A full house, he would’ve been so proud knowing that no one said a bad word about him aloud
He wasn’t perfect, but he was my friend
He wasn’t perfect, but he was one of us
He was one of us

A plaque bears his full name on a bench by the water’s edge
The dates he came and went
And a quote about life and death from a song he’d never heard
‘Cause he wasn’t too fond of long songs with lots of words
If I were him, I’d have never left the village either
But I did, and I know full well
That there are more handsome men and better footballers out there in Greater Manchester
They would’ve cut him down to size if they could’ve, but what good would that do?
He bloomed and he grew and grew, and still he was doomed
Same as me, same as you
Same as everyone I ever knew
You, sometimes still, I think about you
Out there, somewhere, floating in the ether
Born dyed in the wool, never knowing of a belly half full
So many of us just crabs in a barrel
With no feasible means to escape the inevitable cull
There are those that grow thick skins quick for the sake of their sins
And the savvy folk that just keep their mouths shut and take it all on the chin
We collide with each other, we submit, and we bare our teeth
Catch fish using giant metal ships and scream with laughter
At 4AM staggering home down moonlit country lanes
We cry because children are dying across the sea and there is nothing we can do about it
Whilst we benefit from the bombs dropped which we had no part in building
We are sorry, truly we are sorry, we are just trying to get by too

mp3: Yard Act – Tall Poppies

JC