The Overload

British Hype YARD ACT From Nowhere To American TV

Posted on by JL

Last week the post-rap-punk gruppo YARD ACT out of Leeds, performed the title track
of their victorious debut LP on the popular American Tonight TV Show with Jimmy Fallon.

Until early last year, after a couple of singles, nobody ever heard about them (except me, of course). But halfway 2021, their name started to pop up here and there in the British media (the experts on hyping). A few months later they were suddenly the next big thing
of 2022 on multiple music websites/zines/blogs. And now they woke up Amercia up too.

Last January the debut LP The Overload landed and got euphoric reviews. Agreed, it’s a great debut, but after several plays it sounded too familiar with other British bands from the ongoing post-punk rebirth (Ditz, Crows, Life, Shame, Squid etc…) and therefore will not go in into history as one of the best debuts ever.

Anyways, from nowhere to American TV, here’s Yard Act…

THE OVERLOAD album…

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YARD ACT: Facebook

Album Of January 2022 – ‘THE OVERLOAD’ By Leeds Mavericks YARD ACT

Posted on by JL

The best longplayer of the past month

1 February 2022

Band: YARD ACT
Who: Outspoken mavericks from Leeds (UK) led by
sharp-cutting storyteller James Smith
Album: THE OVERLOAD
Released: 21 January 2022 – purchase here here.

NME says: “Fire up the Rover! The Leeds band’s debut is a wild ride through their Yorkshire upbringing, and the curly characters they picked up along the way. The familiar touchstones
of the post-punk scene’s rigid sound – minimalist grooves, sharp guitars – are all here, but the band thrive when they shake up the magic eight ball… The tunes, however, are secondary to how miraculous the story of Yard Act existing is, really. Having made their debut just 18 months ago, and now due for an upcoming sold-out slate of UK shows, their journey is a reminder that the most rewarding endeavours – in life or art – sometimes arrive later than you expect or had hoped. Good things may come to those who wait patiently, but for those who put the graft in, like Yard Act, it tastes all the sweeter.” Full review here. Score: 4/5.

Turn Up The Volume: If you can make it in Leeds, you can make it everywhere, and
when iconic crooner Elton John says he’s a fan (read all about it here) you know you’re a crocodile rock band on the verge of world domination. Their debut LP makes the press and their by now massive fanbase (#2 on UK’s Album Chart last week) go ballistic.

They rattle and rumble while sharp-cutting wordsmith James Smith spits and sneers, like
a punked-up Mark E Smith, about all the bullshit and about all the bullshitters that mess up our already long messed-up society. It’s only January, but this is without a shadow of a doubt one of the most remarkable 2022 albums.

Here’s why…

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YARD ACT: Facebook

Read the full interview of NME with frontman James Smith here

Confirmed By ELTON JOHN – Believe The YARD ACT Hype! Debut LP Is Out This Friday.

Posted on by JL

19 January 2022

If you can make it in Leeds, you can make it everywhere, and when iconic
crooner Elton John says he’s a fan (read all about it here) you know you’re
a crocodile rock band on the verge of world domination.

Anyway, on 4 August 2020 Turn Up The Volume wrote this about
the second single, titled Fixer Upper, by a band he discovered
called YARD ACT from Leeds…

“Prepare for a mind-messing crackerjack that’ll do your head in the way you like it. This funky
as bloody hell banger sounds as if Mike Skinner and Sleaford Mods joined forces to experiment with intoxicating guitar riffs to turn up the decibels on for once. Fixer Upper is an electrifying post-punk rap slam with a repetitive bass-tastic groove having an instant bang-up impact on your body movements. Stupendous boombox stuff, stupendous shake-and-quake vibrations, stupendous street story. Original pirate turbulence, indeed.”

Today, 18 months later Fixer Upper passed the 1 million streams mark on Spotify…

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We have 6 jagged Yard Act jackhammers by now…

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All this and more will be on their debut LP THE OVERLOAD, out in 2 days!

Pre-order here

Rough Trade says about the firstborn: “Pulling off a debut album in a pandemic isn’t easy, but somehow, Yard Act have made it work. Recording with Ali Chant (PJ Harvey, Perfume Genius, Aldous Harding) at his Bristol studio, those prolific demos have been sharpened down into something that speaks to the times we live in, creating a statement of intent that survives on nuance – a record of retro influences, recorded in a modern way, that manages to poke fun at society without punching down from a place of lefty superiority. The Overload is a political record, but in the same way that all great observations of human nature are – a messy, complex, knowingly hypocritical snapshot of our current state of play.”

See you in a couple of weeks in Antwerp, guys.