Nov 1216 min read

A Conversation with James Smith of Yard Act: Fatherhood, Success, and Where's My Utopia?

With no exceptions, James Smith of Yard Act is one of the best interviewees out there—affable, charming, and most importantly, a straight-up truth-teller. This is our second chat for Waxx Lyrical, catching up right before the band’s Australian tour kicks off. We talk about life, fatherhood, and the wild ride that is their latest album, Where's My Utopia? James gets into how it’s been received, how the new sound has pulled in fresh fans (and lost a few old ones), and the push and pull of evolving creatively while grappling with the world's mess. The band's live lineup has expanded, and Aussie crowds will finally have a chance to see it this week. But I’ll leave it there—here is the interview...

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BEN PREECE: Hello, sir. How are you?

JAMES SMITH: Hello. Ben, good to see you again, mate.

BP: You must be a very different man since we spoke to you last. You've a second successful album under your belt. Your family's grown up a little bit. You're more tired than you were before. Having just finished up a huge tour.

JS: Yeah, I am always tired, but I think it's made me appreciate life in a different way. I think it slowed me down, and I think that might have been a good thing.

BP: Slowed you down, slowed your brain down. Do you think?

JS: Yeah, and also, like, having a kid obviously puts your priorities into place, things that you thought mattered, don't all of a sudden, that's quite nice.

BP: I read a quote from you somewhere. I think it was with NME or something, that being successful doesn't solve all your problems, after all.

JS: <laughs> No, no, it absolutely doesn't. Like it might for a while, I think it all comes from a bit, you know, it does Eastern philosophy.

BP: Absolutely. Well, since we spoke last, man, you've got a second incredible record out, Where's My Utopia? You must be absolutely stoked. I mean, I remember speaking to you in person here in Brisbane, and you were, I think you were just sending demos or something to the label at the time, and you were concerned about how they were going to fly with the label. Now, obviously they flew, and it's flying with us, and it's flying with the world. How you feeling about it all?

JS: Yeah, really, really, really, really happy with the response to it. It's definitely grown us around the world. I think getting to see the world off the back something you've made with your mates in a bedroom, is exciting off the first time around, but to be able to do it again and see it all again, it's probably one of the perks for jobs is getting to see the world. I don't know, if I ever would have managed to make it to, like Australia, or otherwise. So, yeah, that's massive. Every well-received one is a relief.

I mean, the the second one is more important than the first, in a sense. You've got to shape the cast that you make, you got to shake the stone that you may be casting or drawing with the second album, or set it harder, and people will assume more about your things. I think I'm glad we made the album we made.

BP: Absolutely, Man, the bravery. I mean, it must take a lot to just shift your sound up like that. You know, you must be sitting there on pre release day, thinking, gosh, is everyone going to like this?

JS: Yeah, massively. And, I mean, I always think that whatever we do, but it definitely felt like a big thing this time. Because, I mean, the emotions over it were quite strange, because we knew we were really proud of it, but we knew that we might have thrown a fan base away and not gained a new one. But I think what happened in the end was we lost a bit of the old one, and gained a lot more new people, and the people that stayed on from album one, that were in that that were just like, "Oh, great." These are the kind of people we want listening to us, because they get that we're going to change, and they're going to sort of stick with us o. And, you know, in a couple of albums time, hopefully when we swing an absolute dud out there, you know, the fans least favourite, and that'll be part of the sort of creative journey to ride the roller coaster of what we attempt to do. I think.

BP: Am I right in saying the success of the second album, and just being able to shift that sound must be incredibly freeing for the future, right?

JS: Yeah, absolutely, I mean, that album was like everything and the kitchen sink, at the wall, deliberately. I don't think we consciously set out to make the record, but subconsciously, would definitely say, it's kind of now or never, to not be bracketed as this one thing of this one certain time. And we all, without really ever saying it, agreed to it and kept having more since.

BP: I remember us talking about it in the first interview we did. And you were saying that you're the last post punk kids through the door, or one of the final ones, so you're going to have to shift it up quicker to to stay on top of everybody. And you've done so. Everybody's sort of still in the same spot, and

you've moved.

JS: I don't even know what the post punk thing means anymore. I don't think anyone does. I think it was a very small faction of students in South London, because the bands that broke out of it, none of them sound alike, and that this fresh kazang vocal thing was a tangent of it, but the rest of it, like all those other bands that kind of still get mentioned, they're all completely different. Just the tag, you know, it was basically just the latest British guitar movement. And, you know, we all been in sort of guitar bands when they were out of vogue for years and then there was a slight reframing of it that seemed to us, to people, as a sort of movement, the last one I've heard is like, post-post Brexit punk or something. I get what they're saying. Anyone after the referendum that felt like the country changed in quite a significant way and it felt like bands were speaking a lot more politically than they had been in a while within music and so sort of specifically about British politics. And they were doing it via talking, more so than singing. But apart from that, and there was also bands that weren't doing that, I don't really know. I think it was just the latest wave of guitar bands, and people have to feel the answer to try and label it, but it definitely benefited us to be a part of it. No one still thinks of The Cure, as post-punk, do they, which they were that's what Three Imaginary Boys was. We just didn't want to be over time and I think we've made the one step so far that we could have done to prove that the next one will be when album three comes out.

BP: And how's the tour have been going. I mean, I can't wait to see you on stage to see how you mix these songs up.

JS: It's been great. We've expanded the lineup for this year. This will be the last tour, actually, with the expanded lineup, which is quite sad really, but we're going to change it up again. We've had Lauren and Daisy singing and dancing with us and it's made it loads of fun. They just bring a different energy, and they brought a different energy out of me. It's definitely mad to see how it's grown and it's mad to see the second record songs getting a bigger reaction than the first, particularly the singles. It just means that you've made a record you wanted to make and it's been critically well received and it's not like the fans are just coming for album one and being dispensed, you know, sort of kicking, kicking the feet around when you play the new ones. That's nice. It gives us more to play with.

BP: Well, we're looking forward to seeing you down here, for sure. Is this the last part of the tour?

JS: It is, yeah. We end in Japan. We've got Australia, then we're off to China, South Korea and then Japan, and, yeah, the Australian shows, I believe Melbourne and Sydney are sold out, and Brisbane and Perth are on the way. It's a long way to go. It'd be quite worrying and get into rooms and.... you can do that back home driving to to Pontefract or something, but if you're getting on that plane for that long, you are really hoping the room's gonna be full. So, yeah, that's really exciting.

I know I'm addressing an Aussie audience here, but the Aussie crowds are a wild like we felt that the club shows we played the first time around. And I'm looking forward to playing a club show in Brisbane, actually, because we only did Laneways in Brisbane. So, yeah, to come back on on on those terms is that exciting!

BP: Let's talk about the album a little bit. I know you must be at the end of talking about the album a little bit. But we haven't, we haven't spoken about it yet.

JS: There's been a bit of a gap, actually, so you probably caught me at quite a refreshed point in the in the press cycle. It's been like five to six months, really, so yeah, ask away. My problem when you do the huge batch of press in the months leading up to the album is with me reverting to the same anecdotes because they start to become a bit rehearsed, because they're true and it's kind of funny. It's quite interesting and I see them grow in the early interviews, where they feel quite exciting that I'm talking about it for the first time, and I'm sort of stumbling across this thing that happened, and realising that it was important to the album, and sort of it feels sequential to the interview, but then, but you know, you say it, no disrespect, to like a student newspaper or something, and you're like, Oh, that was a dead good press bite. And then when NME ask, you just say the same thing again. You want it to be there in the big one, but it's not as spontaneous. So I haven't thought about the album creation of it in months. I've played the songs most nights, obviously, but I haven't thought about it, so you might get something new out of me.

BP: Let's get to the next big press bite then. Where's My Utopia? I mean, the lyrics, the project, in a way, is, the brainchild of you. Where does that come from?

JS: I think it probably quite nicely loops back to what we were saying about fatherhood, tiring you out so much that you don't care about the things that don't matter as much. I suppose the idea is a personal and a worldly question. The personal is asked from a .. I suppose that's the my within it, the selfishness of it. How do I attain what I want from life? Why do I observe it? It's the idea of like, the drive that everyone, that innate entitlement that we all have in within us. What's human rights, and what is, you know, where's everyone's lying on what they feel they're owed in life. And from a world perspective, it's obviously addressing the fact that it does feel quite a lot at the moment, like the world is ending. And I'm sometimes look back and I think, well, people felt I was through the Cold War. And in, people died in the industrial revolution at extremely young ages working in extremely dangerous conditions. Well, they people still do. The idea is that, you know, it's always been that way, but it feels this heightened sense of the end of the world happening at the moment, particularly with like, the climate crisis, and then also just with the fact that World War Three seems to be hitting up and nuclear weapons are being mentioned. I think all that is that sort of yearning for like, how do we achieve this? How does one person contribute to what can we solve on our own? Do we let go? What do we fight for? It's the tandem of those two questions at the same time - the personal and the worldly. I had accepted to a point that the future wouldn't affect me, because I'd be dead by the time it got really bad and and I was happy to just be a sort of hedonist and live my days because I'm entitled to a good life, same as everyone is, you know, and you shouldn't suffer if you can find a way to enjoy being here. But I think that all changed when I had my son, because the future felt more important all of a sudden, and I had to connect that beyond just the if I save my son and nobody else, because he's my blood, then that selfishness. I think it leads back to the idea that it is all mankind, and we're sort of the way to sort of work through it as a species, really. How do we do that? I do not know.

BP: It must be so hard being a parent in 2024. It must be underlying terror constantly.

JS: Yeah. I mean, he's like three and a half now, so he's at an age where he's oblivious to it. But I was talking to a friend earlier, actually, and they they were working in a kids club in the school holidays.

And they were saying that when, when all the EDL stuff was kicking off over here, that there was kids, sort of 10 ish, 10 to 14. And he was like they were all hyper aware of this, these racist riots happening within our country and you've got kids of colour in a school holiday club talking about this. I think, one, it's heartbreaking that kids having to talk about those things. Two, it's harrowing as a parent to think, how do you explain this to your kid and still make them see like excitement and wonder in the world? There is a way to do it. At its core, it ends on 'A Vineyard For The North', which has that seed of hope, the same as the first album had '100% Endurance' at the end, at its core, it is striving. It's not just celebrating how shit everything is, and it's not just commenting on how shit things are. It's trying to find a way to sort of grow and have hope and faith in the future.

BP: That little speech in 'Down By The Stream' at the end, where you're addressing your son is incredibly powerful. That's one of the most powerful moments on the entire record.

JS: Yeah, that one felt quite poignant. I've thought about the idea of the cycle of abuse and where we draw a line, and not where we accept abuse because of that, the individual abuser's history, but how it's an explanation for it, and how we can break cycles and patterns. I found it quite an interesting thing to explore. And I thought it was quite it was funny, there was a few reviews that missed the irony of the end of it, where I talk about pinning my son to the wall by his rucksack and screaming in his face because he's been bullying someone. There's a couple of articles that missed that was highlighting the idea of a cycle of abuse, not what I would literally do. So yeah, it was, it was weird that, because you kind of go into some when you you're hoping that everyone's gonna You have to accept that not everyone's gonna get where and what angle you're coming from when you write something like that, that you hope can address a more complicated issue, I don't know.

BP: Yeah, that must be tough. I mean, with a sense of humour, even as yours, bit of tongue in cheek, bit of sarcasm. It, you know, it's

JS: Yeah. No, it does. But I suppose that's part of it. That's why you can't be, you can't water yourself down because someone's not going to get it. I suppose

BP: And what's your, what's your moment on the record? What's your favourite? And

JS: I'm really proud of 'Blackpool Illuminations' as a tune. And musically as well, because it started basically with just Sam. Sam brought that guitar riff that opens it when we were in France, we were in like a little chalet in France between a festival, we brought the laptop and the interface on the road and, Sam brought that in and I woke up and wrote about two thirds of the song, and recorded it that morning and and up until the bit with the strings where I take the pill, if people haven't heard the record it's gonna sound stupid, and it gets a bit euphoric - on the finished record that's the first time I said those words. That was the that's the scratch take, you can hear this like SM-58 rustling on my t-shirt and stuff. We kept that because that delivery felt like the one. I tried to redo it but it just sounded quite sterile and not as personable. So we had that already and then we built the music back underneath it and added in the sort of changes and when, by the time Chris, he plays and added these sort of like Gil Scott Heron, Brian Jackson star flute, sitting at that part, we were like, Oh, this is we found something there. I really enjoyed that, making that, because it was a long, drawn out process, and I wish they'd been a bit more of a light shone on it. But obviously it was never going to be a radio single.

And the other one I like is 'The Undertow'. I was just really happy with that as a song. And like, ironically, those are the two that we haven't played live yet, but they're going to be on the album three tour, I think we've not had a chance to learn them.

We couldn't play any of the record live and we started in January with the seven-piece band with Daisy and Lauren and Chris back again. So it was all done in the studio and on computers over like this course of a year in between touring. At the end we had to figure out how we play the tunes and we chose to do it. We said we didn't want track. We didn't want to be anchored by the structures of a click track, of a backing track. So we avoided that. And it's given the songs a completely different sort of tone and energy to the record. I think it really works, you know.

BP: I can imagine. So no track at all. So it's all triggered, live and whatnot?

JS: Yeah. And even if there were parts with string sections on them, rather than have the strings on keys, we just play it in on like an organ, or like Chris will play the organ or the piano, so it sounds more like sort of band still. So there's a lot of organ in the live set now. It's sounding good, the band sound great. I'm so so impressed by the way they play together. And just to be able to sort of hear them every night, they sound so good, like they make it so easy for me, because they sound so good. And even if I'm having a tough night in my head no one's going to know, because they carry it like in such a way, like every single one of them, just incredible players. It's really cool.

BP: I asked you this question last time. Are you happy with your place in the world right now?

JS: Yeah, yeah, I am. I'm feeling I'm starting to get to a point now with the band where, having had the two albums do well, I thought it was all going to end overnight from the start, and I still feel that now, but only sort of once a month instead of every day. And I've kind of realised from an outward looking perspective as a as a band we're doing all right and people like us and people value my music and they aren't all just going to abandon me overnight. I do have a job, and I do get to keep doing this. That's really nice, but from an inward perspective, I'm learning every day that this matters less and less, and there are more important things to life than being, you know, than having been in a whether people like me or not, basically. But that probably comes in tandem with the fact that it gets, the probability of people not liking me is shrunk by the fact that people are now invested in me as you know, it's the irony that the horn is easier to accept now that subconsciously, I know it's not going away as fast as I thought it was. That's no that's quite cruel, I suppose, but that's the way my brain's working. And yeah, I'm getting there. I have a lot of love for life. I think. Yeah, it's a beautiful world, I still believe that, and I get very sad and and sometimes that boils into this grinding frustration and depression because of the way of the world. Yeah, I I have more ways now. I have more methods now to be able to understand and find beauty within it.

BP: It's, it's exciting to see you doing an Australian tour of on your own back this time, you know, not just a Laneway, not just a Laneway, that was amazing. But you know what I mean?

JS: We were originally meant to be there in July because we were doing Splendour, but obviously that got canceled. We had headline shows books around that, but obviously it fell through. So I'm glad we managed to fit it in this year as well. And yeah, and I'm excited to come back on our own terms.

BP: Are you resting, or you've been writing songs again? I know you don't really stop, so you must be into album three already, right?

JS: Yeah, yeah, we are. We've written quite a bit. It's not any shape yet, though. I don't really know it's up. There's no sort of like narrative or cohesive theme, like there is with the first two albums. Yet maybe there won't be this time that might just not be where it's going, but we've written a lot, I think maybe, yeah, we since we got back from Mexico, we're building the studio basically, so we're in the I'm going down tomorrow, so we're having some baffles and stuff from the ceiling. When that's finished, after we get back from this last tour, we've got a good chunk of time off, and we're going to sort of be in our studio demoing away. There's a lot to work through. I'm excited about it, really excited about it.

BP: It's one of those never ending machines that you can just keep rolling. Album three is probably going to be, I don't know, a techno record for, for all we know, you know,

JS: There's a hardcore record kicking around, we've talked about just doing a hardcore punk record, because we did that version on the end of 'Grifters Grief' that we tacked on. We recorded it both ways, and it was the most fun playing that version. And so, yeah, maybe just going out and doing a hardcore sort of be cool, rejig some of the old ones in that style, and then doing an album of it. The label, though, I think they'll probably want something a bit more accessible, which is fine, we've got that as well. Yeah, now I'm excited about I'm three.

BP: Well, my friend, I really appreciate your time today. I know it's, I know it's downtime for you, so it must be hard to stay up and have a chat. I really appreciate you. Thank you.