I Just Read About That…

[ATTENDED: October 10, 2024] Yard Act

I had tickets to see Yard Act last back in 2022.  That show was cancelled at the last minute because Yard Act was called back home to do a live TV appearance for the Mercury Prize (surely a lot more lucrative than playing a gig at Underground Arts).

But they returned to Underground Arts last year and I grabbed a ticket.  My expectations were mild and they blew me away with their energy and fun.

Yard Act are very British (being from Leeds).  On record, “singer” James Smith mostly rants and speaks angrily in his accented English.  His lyrics are placed over some very cool guitars from Sam Shipstone and some really grooving bass from Ryan Needham.  Drummer Jay Russell keeps things together.

For this tour they added two backing singers Daisy Smith and Lauren Fitzpatrick who made a surprising difference to the show.  Their vocal contributions were great but it was their physical presence that added a lot to the show.  They also added a keyboardist Christopher Duffin who fleshed out the sounds–I’m not sure if he was making some of the really weird sounds that floated through the background, but I assume so.

They opened the set with the same song as last year.  James Smith was dressed in a business casual.  And like last tie, Sam Shipstone was in a T-shirt and shorts, just ripping things up on the far side (I wished I was on his side of the stage after the show started).  I loved that at one point (many points, actually), he just seemed to be running something up and down the neck of his guitar making an unholy racket while the rest of the band kept up (and Smith jumped around the stage like a monkey).

A band like Yard Act is pretty easy to get up to speed with. A song like Payday has the great chanted chorus of Take the Money, Take the Money, Take the Money and Run!  During this song the backing singers had their own choreography going on, which was a lot of fun to watch,   I wondered if they had just decided to come up with these moved to amuse themselves.

I didn’t know the new album that well, but I loved that at the beginning of Fizzy Fish, one of the backing singers had an octagonal tambourine with a Prince logo in the middle of it.   The bass in a Yard Act song is really quite essential but it can be easily overlooked.  And yet in a song like Land of the Blind, it sounds amazing and Ryan Needham is a character, wearing a blazer and seemingly like he might be in Pulp.

During the song there was a massively long guitar solo.  When I saw them last time, Smith sat on the drum riser with his head in his hands during the entire solo.  Hilarious.  This time, he did the same, but the backing singers came over and sat with him and they soon started rocking back and forth to the pulsing beat.

Later Daisy Smith played a slide whistle while Lauren Fitzpatrick had the Prince tambourine.  And Christopher Duffin started skronking on a saxophone.

For Dream Job, the singers came down and flanked Smith while doing a really fun synchronized dance.

Smith is a fascinating front man.  He’s not exactly engaging with the audience–he often seems like he’s just doing his own thing–but he is always entertaining to watch. And at the same time, he has the entire audience in his hands and he is a non-stop machine of gestures and quips, singing and screaming lyrics.

A song like We Make Hits with its instantly screamable chorus had the whole audience singing along.

They played seven songs from the new album.  As the show neared its conclusion and they smashed into Trench Coat Museum, Smith grabbed some kinds of effects box (he had one like this las time too).  I have no idea if anything he did was audible.  The band was going nuts and everyone was making all kinds of noise, so who knows if he contributed.  But he knelt on the ground poking buttons and getting absorbed in his chaos.

They came back for a quick encore of the rousing chantalong Witness and the show was over after about 80 minutes.  They could certainly throw some more songs in the show, but it never felt like a short show–so much was going on and we were all pretty exhausted by the end.

A great night of music!

⊗ Where’s My Utopia (2024)
ø single (2023)
♠ The Overload (2022)
Δ Dark Days EP (2021)