Yard Act: ‘It’s an anti-capitalist record on a major record label’ – Music News

Yard Act join the latest episode of The Matt Wilkinson Show on Apple Music 1 to discuss their debut album “The Overload”. They tell Matt about the conflict of putting out “an anti-capitalist record on a major record label”, adjusting to success, making people laugh at their live shows, their songwriting process and more.

Yard Act’s James Smith Tells Apple Music How The Pandemic Influenced Them As A Band…

Obviously everything we’ve done was throughout the pandemic pretty much. We had to kind of just learn to adapt to a new world. And I think maybe that influenced the way Yard Act functioned in a way that we kind of thought, “Well, you never know what’s around the corner. Maybe just get on with it and have fun with it.” And the reaction was so quick to it and it really took us by surprise. But once it did, we kind of knew that we’d not had that with previous bands. And we knew that we didn’t want to let that pass us by and take it for granted. So we wanted to seize that moment, but at the same time, because we’ve done it in the past, we kind of knew why we were doing it. And that was just because we enjoyed writing songs and we enjoyed each other’s company and it’d be easier to do that to full rooms on a road. It’s nice when there’s people there that like it. It encourages you.

Yard Act’s James Smith Tells Apple Music About Their Album “The Overload”…

You know, it’s an anti-capitalist record on a major record label, and that’s probably the best summary of it I can give… Juxtaposition is key to the record. You know, life is complex. People are complex, and I can be against one thing whilst working within it because I don’t get to live outside of it. And that’s what the album is about. It’s existing within a world you want to change, whilst doing things that your purist self wouldn’t want to do, knowing that you have to.

Yard Act’s James Smith Tells Apple Music About Their New Single ‘Rich’…

And I mean that track, ‘Rich’, the latest single, ‘Rich’, that was written at a point where we were just starting to discuss the possibility of, in like six months to a year’s time, maybe being able to jack our day jobs to try it full time. And that was the first time in my life that it had ever been a possibility that… Even considered it’d be a possibility that music could be a job. So that song was kind of written in that sense of as someone who hasn’t had money, and never thought he would sort of earn much money. And to be offered the hypothetical, life change that you can’t really control, but you might actually benefit from something that you’re against, is quite interesting.

Yard Act’s Ryan Needham Tells Apple Music About Their Humorous Lyrics…

Like you, I think I like the funnier ones. There’s quite a few in ‘Rich’ that really make me laugh. The thing about, “It appears we both got out. People hate you for it. People really hate you for it.” I don’t know. Yeah. There’s tons in that. And the humour is the thing that in other bands that I’ve been in and stuff, it’s not really been a huge part of it really. And it took kind of a bit of a while getting used to that. Playing live, having people actually… Seeing people creasing up laughing when you’re playing. Normally, that signifies… That’s not normally a good thing, is it? … If you stood in front of like a hundred people trying to be really cool, and then they’re all laughing… Yeah, it took a bit a while getting used to it. But as soon as… A few gigs in, I’m like, “Ah, this is totally a different thing.” I sort of had to reframe it a little bit.

Yard Act’s James Smith Tells Apple Music About Their Song ‘Tall Poppies’…
It’s basically every person, every boy that comes from a large village/small town, where I grew up. It’s kind of a study on who has that innate sense of wondering how far it goes from what they want from life, you know. Because some people are very content to stay where they are, and that’s completely fine. And some people are so adventurous that their sort of ambition is to move an hour away to Leeds, and start a band. And some people are so ambitious that they want to travel the world and never come home because they’re so restless. And it’s just a song about having one life and the choices that we make, and ultimately what do they add up to in the end?

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