More about: Yard Act

It’s a beautifully warm, somewhat sweaty day in Leeds as post-punk, hometown-heroes Yard Act take to the legendary stage at The Brudenell Social Club. The quartet tear straight into new material from the get go - the new music is punchy, chaotic and cuts through effortlessly. James Smith rages at modern British life and takes the piss with a barbed tongue. 

‘Dark Days’ and ‘Peanuts’ get the socially distanced crowd clapping, stomping and singing. Yard Act hardly stop to take a breath until Smith very politely asks the crowd for some Gaviscon (that rock'n'roll, hey) - he stalks the stage throughout, crouching and snarling his lyrics with a superior stage presence and charm (think Mark E Smith meets Jarvis Cocker).

We then get four new tracks back to back, ‘Human Sacrifice’, ‘Dead Horse’, ‘Land of The Blind’ and ‘The Overlord’. Each of these tracks follow the Yard Act template with in-your-face, robust punk, though there's a real maturity in these tracks and the sense of progression from their first single is apparent. These new tracks really have something about them: Yard Act are outrageously talented musicians and the politically-loaded lyrics are as depressingly relevant as they are hilarious. 

Yard Act close out the short set with two YA classics, ‘Fixer Upper’ and ‘Trappers Pelts’, which really bring the house down. Yard Act seem like a band on the cusp of something huge; they’ve endured a lockdown, line-up changes and have only done four (yes four) live gigs to date, but the tracks are of such high quality that YA are bound to explode. Mark my words, this band are going to be massive.

Yard Act played:

Strip
Dark Days
Peanuts
Human Sacrifice
Dead Horse
Land of The Blind
The Overlord
Fixer Upper
Trappers Pelts

More about: Yard Act