YARD ACT OVERLOAD
1-LP Holland
Rock
‘The Overload’ is the debut album of Leeds four-piece Yard Act. Spanning 11 tracks, the record rages with the band’s inimitable wit, musical dexterity and tasteful curation. Littered with Yard Act’s signature dark humour and knowing cynicism, ‘The Overload pokes’ fun at society without ever punching down from a place of superiority. “Lyrically, I think it’s a record about the things that we all do - we're all so wired into the system of day today that we don't really stop and think about the constructs that define us,” says front man James Smith. “But also beyond that, it's kind of exciting, because there’s still so much we don’t understand; how a hive mind set is forged, how information spreads, how we agree and presume things without thinking. Some people think more than others, but a lot of this sloganeering - ‘I'm on the left, I'm not wrong’ - doesn't achieve anything. Gammons, Karens, Snowflakes, whatever – I find it all so boring. I'm just not into that.”
Yard Act have built a sound that speaks inherently to their birth place of Leeds, West Yorkshire, and yet ties together observations from all walks of modern British life – the small-town bloke in the local pub, the anti-capitalist stuck at a desk job, the tired activist in all of us torn between easy complicity and the desire to fight.