LOATHING AND LOVEABLE | YARD ACT RETURN WITH NEW ALBUM ‘YOU’RE GONNA NEED A LITTLE MUSIC”

ALBUM REVIEW | YARD ACT – YOU’RE GONNA NEED A LITTLE MUSIC by Gracie Erskine

Two years on since their sophomore album Where’s My Utopia?, everyone’s favourite cynics Yard Act, return with their latest record You’re Gonna Need A Little Music. 

There’s an immediate “is this thing on?” kind of moment with opener ‘Empty Pledges’. That’s until you’re met with an industrial sludge, laying the foundation for the perpetual misery that this record is going to warp itself around. The observational despair is harnessed within the wit and quick retorts of frontman and lyricist James Smith. It’s euphorically dismal in its defensive loathing, and really stabs into your own inner musings that you never realised you had – until you did. Arguably, the worst part about the track is not being able to pick what the ‘best’ lyric is, as so many knives are thrown at you, but “What’s wrong with Leeds?“is the most home-hitting of the lot – surely?

Musically loitering is that kind of sexily depressive post-punk brooding shoegaze hybrid.  The track itself feels endless to commentary, and frankly deserves itself on 800 words on its pure brilliance. It’s that throttling grip that shakes you, letting you know there’s a more matured Yard Act on the table – whether you like it or not. 

Pulling influences like a bull in a record shop (that’s the saying, right?), identity remains so autochthonous to the band. From the Strokes-esque piercing guitar of ‘New Beginnings’ to the Talking Heads style recital in ‘Fiction’. Lyrically a humbled grandeur, ‘Tall Tales’ recollects and swirls like a whiskey glass in a jazz bar, except it’s more a stout in a working men’s club and take that in most positive way. 

There are some more emotionally blithe moments on the record, taking shape in the more care-free indie format of short and sweet ‘Cherophobe Rock’. Title track ‘You’re Gonna Need A Little Music’ twinkles in a little toe-tapping piano funk and breathlessly 90’s perfume advert vocal delivery, it’s almost seductive and the most escapist feel, wandering through the travels of the story, vanishing into the chorus. 

Naturally, ‘Janey Said’ slips back into melancholia, interpersonal spoken word rallying though a solemn date. It’s self-referential irony “I’ll probably get a good song outta this” (and that much is true), lines musically parallel to the lyrics like a laugh track echoing through. 

Lyrically, the album sits in the twilight zone of irony, never really knowing true sincerity, but that juxtaposition makes it feel all the more real. Storytelling overridden by musings and the most amicable self-obsessive wit. You can imagine the pen having a lie down whilst it sits back and chuckles at itself.

Though it may appear like the album is crushing you from the inside out, ‘Over The Barrel’ does bring you back, well, over. Back into somewhere where the chords go a little more major, and you climb your way back up the scale. That’s obviously before you’re contorted into a musical frenzy of an outro met with the most sinister choir, because what are you if not grounded, eh?

You’re gonna need a little music; well yes, as you’re confronted with every musing, every emotion and everything you’d want out of a new Yard Act album. Their tertiary record if the most fulfilling to date, executing every aspect of mundanity with their most harmonious post-punk concoction and of course, the most piercing sharpness.

You’re Gonna Need A Little Music by Yard Act is out Friday 17th July via Island Records – Buy/Listen HERE

Catch the band of their intimate UK record store tour this week before the band hit the road for a full tour in November. Tickets available NOW.

Record Store Tour

16th July – La Belle Angele, Edinburgh (in association with Assai Records)

17th July – Baltic, Liverpool (in association with Jacaranda Records)

19th July – Rough Trade East, London

21st July – Rough Trade, Nottingham

22nd July – Rough Trade, Bristol

24th July – Chalk, Brighton (in association with Resident Records)

UK Tour Dates

6^th November – O2 Academy, Leeds

7^th November – O2 Academy, Leeds 

10^th November – NX, Newcastle 

11^th November – Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow 

12^th November – Octagon Centre, Sheffield

13^th November – O2 Victoria Warehouse, Manchester

15^th November – Wulfrun Hall, Wolverhampton 

16^th November – O2 Academy, Leicester 

17^th November – Rock City, Nottingham 

18^th November – Junction 1, Cambridge 

20^th November – O2 Academy, Oxford 

21^st November – Bristol Beacon, Bristol 

23^rd November – Plymouth Arena, Plymouth 

24^th November – O2 Guildhall, Southampton 

26^th November – O2 Academy Brixton, London