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Where’s My Utopia? ISLAND

Leeds quartet spread their net far and wild on second outing. By Johnny Sharp

8/10

Yard Act: trying not to phone it in

PHOEBEFOX

WHATEVERyou say they are, that’s what they’re not. It’s anatural impulse of any band who have experienced sudden acclaim, and the reductive hype that goes with it, to kick hard against it creatively. Sometimes that’s to the point of commercial self-harm.

So when Yard Act’s follow-up to their 2022 debut, the Mercury-nominated, No 2album The Overload, is peppered with sardonic self-referential asides, you’re immediately struck by the suspicion that this is their stab at leaving every party that would have them as members. The disagreeable second album, if you will.

“I was hot property once but now the promise has gone”,James Smith sneers on opening track “An Illusion”, and the inward focus continues on the biz-baiting anti-anthem “We Make Hits” (“and if this isn’t ahit, we’ll say it’s ironic”). As if his spiritual uncle and namesake Mark Ehas been reborn as an acolyte of the Arctic Monkeys, Smith relates, “We know there’s no surprising/Anyone with eyes and ears round here that we’re all gonna sink”.

That’sone of several such barbs, either side of Smith witheringly referring to his own band as “post-punk’s latest poster boys” who “ride on the coattails of the dead”. Yet there remains avim and vigour about their sound that belies such lyrical pessimism. They’re still enjoying themselves on this rabble-rousing twofingers to expectations, even if they can’t shake their inner critics: “We just wanna have some fun before we’re sunk/And if that’s the attitude you exude then you know you’re really punk!”

Despite such apparent preoccupation with their own impending demise, Smith insists that during the process of creating Where’s My Utopia?, they managed to forget about “what dickheads will make of album two” (as they put it later on this album), allowing them to make the kind of sounds they always had in their heads but didn’t feel confident enough to on The Overload. The styles hopscotch freely, from the infectious urchin funk of “Dream Job” (think LCD Soundsystem backed by the Blockheads) through the blend of sprechgesang, dub, noise-rock and hip-hop found on “Fizzy Fish”, to the hardcore bluster that closes “Grifter’s Grief” and the echoes of Go-Go’s-style pop evoked by Katy JPearson’s contribution to “When The Laughter Stops”.

The contrasts are heightened by the production help of Gorillaz drummer Remi Kabaka Jr, and the frequent stylistic handbrake turns also reflect the bipolar mood swings of some tracks and the meandering tales they tell. “Down By The Stream”’s story of teenage misadventure with “cherry cola can bongs” is set to clumsily ebullient, whooping Northern hip-hop, as if Cypress Hill had been relocated to Billinge Lump, but Smith’s admission of bullying triggers astark swerve into sparse ambient noise and a flashback, where he broods about how he would brutally intimidate his own son if he bullied anyone –thereby continuing the cycle of abuse, of course.