In search of Yard Act utopia

When Elton John crowned Yard Act as one of the most interesting bands of the moment, more than one must have wondered who they were. Yet, their debut album, The Overloadwas nominated for the Mercury Prize, earned a sold-out tour and laid the foundations for a version of their song 100% Endurance right with the British baronet. Two years following their debut album, which reached second place in the UK charts, the Leeds quartet released Where’s My Utopia?a confirmation of their creativity.

Edgy post punk

Yard Act started from an edgy post punk, son of the lesson taught by the Fall, and over time they have added new sonic elements to songs that combine bitter irony with pungent reflections on the present. After all, they are one of those groups born in the shadow of Brexit, which still grips the British music industry, especially the independent one. Part of the credit for this effective formula can be attributed to the singer, James Smith, who addresses sociopolitical and autobiographical themes with the strength of repetition and spoken word. The absence of melody is compensated by rhythm, an element that in Where’s My Utopia? takes on even more importance thanks to the co-production of Remi Kabaka Jr of Gorillaz.

Convinced that doing what you want from adolescence doesn’t solve your problems, Smith wondered why he mightn’t grasp happiness, despite success, parenthood and a peaceful family life. This restlessness is summarized in a very energetic way in the first single that anticipated the album, with the unequivocal title Dream Jobwhere he sings: “Welcome to the future, paranoia suits you.”

Where’s My Utopia?

Where’s My Utopia? it is a container of sounds and words where nuances of everyday life coexist. The gloomy one Petroleum takes inspiration from the singer’s experience of burn out, experienced during the last tour and treated with the utmost spontaneous sincerity, as if it were a stream of consciousness, an intimate confession where Smiths lays bare his inability to face the discomfort. Strengthened by his groove, Down By the Stream looks back to childhood, in the conclusion A Vineyard for the North instead, the issue of climate change takes center stage. But there is also a lot of (self-)irony in the album: at a certain point Yard Act define themselves as “the last poster boys of post punk” who “ride on the shoulders of the dead”. In the nostalgic Blackpool Illuminations Smith draws on memories of a holiday to the British city he took as a child, making the story clearer thanks to a string section, but, towards the end of the song, an exchange breaks the mood: “Are you making all this up? ”, “Yes, a little, why?”.

In The Undertow it is once once more the irony that breaks one of the numerous existential questions of the record, Smiths asks himself what we were born to do if we then die alone and, immediately following, he sings: “only God can answer, so where is my phone?”. When the Laughter Stops reinvents the band’s sonic roots with a dance twist, while, throughout the album, the critical attitude towards a toxic capitalist system remains the same as it once was.Where’s My Utopia? it is, right from the title, an album of questions. His goal is not to find the answers, but to dance through these dark times, to find the strength to face a complex present in a smile. It may seem pretentious, but certainly not utopian.