A barnstorming, full-throttle rock’n’roll show from rising stars Yard Act
At the end of a year that began with Yard Act promoting their almost-chart-topping debut album, The Overload, in front of a small and curious audience at Pryzm Kingston, the Leeds-based group’s final concert of 2022 saw them cheered to the light fittings by 2,300 people packed into a sold-out O2 Forum, in Kentish Town. From the stage, singer James Smith wondered whether anyone “would have thought a bunch of f—ing idiots like us would be playing rooms like this?”
Perhaps because Yard Act’s members have a history of playing in long-forgotten bands, there remains a powerful obduracy at work even in the face of evident success. Never mind that the Forum had on its dancing shoes, Yard Act ploughed through the first portion of their 80-minute set as if they were playing for patrons at a social club in Wakefield who couldn’t be bothered to listen, or might even turn nasty.
Yet after almost a year on tour, the musicality was striking. Bassist Ryan Needham and drummer Jay Russell are an exceptional rhythm section. Fittingly for a group that are often called post-punk, guitarist Sam Shjipstone plays like Keith Levene.
Atop this sits Smith, the poet laureate of people who aren’t really cool, who aren’t particularly poor, who aren’t really bad, and who certainly don’t expect to feature in evocative vignettes about national character. On the Forum’s large stage, at times the frontman cavorted like a drunk dancing to Chumbawamba at a 90s disco, or did a twirl like someone trying to extinguish a fire in the pocket of their overcoat.
In lesser hands, the cleverness and detachment that is part of his DNA might have given way to a tiresome indie irony. But Yard Act are a rock’n’roll band, and this was a rock’n’roll show. As an elongated version of their song Tall Poppies moved through its numerous movements like a 21st-century take on the Rolling Stones’ Midnight Rambler, the momentum of it all was both irresistible and deliberate.
Of course, soon enough the hour will arrive at which Yard Act will be required to make new music. When it does, they will need to decide what exactly they plan to do with all this attention, should they wish it to last. As if with this on their minds, as the musicians left the stage in Kentish Town, behind them flashed a sign that read “100% irrelevant”. It was the only lie they told all evening.
Yard Act will tour the UK in April and May. Tickets: yardactors.com
