YARD ACT - You’re Gonna Need A Little Music

The city bleeds but I’m not from here
I retain the right to roam
I built a life rife with promise and squandered solace in monochrome

The promo for the third chapter of Yard Act surprised fans by showing a car being set on fire by the band themselves, a visual metaphor for a break with the past, the destruction of expectations and a willingness to embrace the new and the unpredictable. “You’re Gonna Need A Little Music” comes across as a summa of the Leeds outfit's work, running from the post-punk and sprechgesang of their early days on “Dark Days” and “The Overload”, to the dance-punk, avant-funk and neighbouring territory explored on “Where’s My Utopia?” (on that note, memorable was frontman James Smith's residency on Bbc Radio 6 Music for the “6 Music Artist in Residence“ series, in which he spoke freely about his father's record collection and the sounds that had influenced him), with the addition of freely roaming sonic elements.

As the album's title partly suggests, the focus here is placed mainly on composition and arrangement, the fruit of long studio sessions with the whole band together rather than recorded remotely as in the past. The lyrics are slightly less incisive than on previous records, though no less caustic, centring on the consequences of success and, above all, on the multitude of individual — and increasingly distant — realities in which each of us seeks refuge. Lending a hand on production duties is Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Paramore, Wolf Alice, Poppy, Deafheaven), the culmination of a more studio-focused approach that has allowed the quartet to work with greater concentration and fewer distractions.

The album gets off to a flawless start thanks to the rising theatrical swagger and percussive emphasis of "Empty Pledges", followed by the unmistakable footsteps of Beck's "Loser", blended for the occasion with fragments of Blur's "The Great Escape", the lifeblood over which the verses of the solid "New Beginnings" glide. Stylistically, a touch of Albarn-esque flair also surfaces on the following "Tall Tales", which builds on a slowly rising spoken word delivery, propped up by piano and guitars, dusting off the leaner influences of the debut, before swiftly changing course with "Fiction", which hits the dancefloor flaunting airs somewhere between Talking Heads-style funk and dance/new rave in Lcd Soundsystem territory.
The dancing continues, driven along by the infectious disco piano groove of "You're Gonna Need A Little Music", the record's centrepiece, which speeds by like the car chase described in its lyrics, with an old crackling radio playing in the background.

Crooked, slightly distorted melodies in a frantic upbeat catch the listener off guard on the sarcastic, fizzing "Cherophobe Rock", where the memory leaps straight back to the guitar-driven (and vaguely garage-inflected) indie rock of the early 2000s, with an eye on Franz Ferdinand, Kaiser Chiefs, Hives and the like. "Thrill Of The Chase" is one of the album's high points, offering an explosive blend of rap, dynamic funk riffs borrowed from James Brown's "The Payback" and boosted by electronics and drum and bass echoes, along with excursions bordering on metal, before cooling things down with the jazzy atmospheres of "Janey Said", which nod to Mac Miller's alternative r&b.

The closing trio of tracks opens with the gloomy “Redeemer”, another symbol of that unpredictability sought by Smith and co. and, precisely for this reason, chosen as the lead single, with a mighty bass line underpinning a mix of hip-hop, alt-rock and blues shadings (the latter two details a more or less deliberate nod to Qotsa's “Keep Your Eyes Peeled”).
Wrapping things up on a slightly quieter note are the britpop mood of “Talky Talky People” and the tail-end explosion of the catchy indie-rock of “Over The Barrel”. Over the course of the divertissement set up by “You’re Gonna Need A Little Music”, Yard Act perfectly distil what is meant by eclecticism: in terms of sound there's a huge amount going on, and, just like its predecessor, it takes a few more listens to fully sink in. Given what we know of the Leeds project's potential on stage, it promises to be remarkably effective live too.

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22/08/2026