Leeds bunch Yard Act felt like one to watch the second they burst through in 2020 with “The Trapper’s Pelts”’, four minutes of sandpaper post-punk, lyrical crosshairs trained on figure-fiddling uber-rich types. Their subsequent Dark Days EP fuelled the flame, all chunky beats and wiry guitars with the pithy words from James Smith’s sharp tongue the icing on the cake.
The Overload lives up to its hype with flying colours. Brilliantly constructed to unfurl like some sordid soap opera of Brexit Britain, it brims with vignettes populated by instantly-recognisable caricatures of the now. There’s “the landlord, Fat Andy” on the title track, a misdemeaning man in a suit narrates ‘The Incident’, while our old friend Graham, the new money slab of gammon from ‘Fixer Upper’, cameos too.
Yard Act wear their affiliations on their sleeves, as James satirises the day’s big-ticket topics – consumerism, gentrification, cancel culture, class identity – with a perfect balance of wit and genuine insight.
His lyrics are dense, revealing more word play with repeat listens, his slick delivery and heavy accent an amalgamation of John Cooper Clarke, Stewa
There’s a unique flair to the way he embodies the characters too. On ‘Land of the Blind’ you hear the saliva wet round his mouth as he points fun at English imperialism: “We cram clammy hands into empty pockets… So we can all fuck about half naked on the beaches of some far off foreign land”.
Conintue reading on DIYMag.com
by Alex Cabre