THE WAXX LYRICAL INTERVIEW
Whatever naivety Australian music audiences have when hearing the name Yard Act is about to end. The four-piece post-punk group from Leeds are already most of their way through conquering the UK and have their sights set on Down Under, having locked in a Laneway tour and an exclusive pressing of their debut album The Overload with your mates here at Waxx Lyrical.
In the mother country, the lads have the fastest selling debut vinyl record this century and, with what's even rarer an achievement, it's actually worthy of all the hype. It has earned most of the accolades that a young English band including a Mercury Prize nomination and created a fan in Elton John, but at the crux is a classic British album that embraces the current obsession the country has with post-punk and offers it more heart and has more in common with the like of Blur and Pulp than it does Shame or IDLES. Nuanced, everyday characters are created and themes of money and lack thereof go hand in hand with musical artifices, ad libs, strong tunefulness and pop sensibilities, driving and danceable grooves and unexpected guitar counter-melodies throughout. It is a political record, but in the same way that all great observations of human nature are – a messy, complex, knowingly hypocritical snapshot of our current state of play, as exciting as it is amusing, as impressive as it is likely to keep any listening ears on their toes.
We had a candid chat with frontman James Smith about this exclusive record and he's affable and incredibly open as he also talks through the band's enormous and unexpected success, chasing Years & Years to #1, how he would say g'day to Australia when the band visits for Laneway early next year, fitting into to this mythical post-punk revival genre , making friends with Elton John and, of course, what vinyl means to him as a musician.
Watch the full interview below, well, at least as much as we recorded before the silly Zoom time limit cut us off....
YARD ACT'S DEBUT ALBUM THE OVERLOAD OUT NOW
Limited Edition Australian Exclusive Signed Translucent Magenta Vinyl available now, only from Waxx Lyrical.
KEY INGREDIENTS: - Fastest selling debut vinyl record this century (UK) - Exclusive variant to Waxx Lyrical - Limited Edition (only 300 pressed) - 180 gram heavyweight vinyl - Translucent magenta coloured vinyl - Personally signed by all four band members
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