Yard Act ★★★✩✩
Place and date: Apollo 2 (IV/11/2024)
If the group Yard Act has not yet finished getting started, perhaps it is because the public does not know exactly what to hold on to when listening to their music. But the Leeds quintet, led by singer James Smith, is already more than ready to leave small venues and move on to larger venues. It was very evident in their passage through the crowded medium-sized room of Apolo, where they were received with enthusiasm in what they have called Dream job tour, presentation of their second album Where's my utopia, produced by Remi Kabaka Jr. of Gorillaz.
Steeped in the same eclecticism that has made Damon Albarn's cartoon group famous, from the initial An illusion they show songs that mix groove, melodic and rapped singing and Brit-pop essence, enhanced by two female backup singers. Their love for funk and cutting rhythms leads them to resemble Talking Heads in Dead Horse, with lyrics that lament the drift of their country, punctuated by a dislocated sax, whose squawks will be the norm throughout the evening.
But if there is one thing that characterizes Yard Act's music, it is post-punk, shouty and rocking in Petroleum, although they also do not hesitate to embrace a mix of swing, hip hop and sharp guitar in Land of the Blind. Linking songs from his first album The Overload with the current ones, Smith does not stop with his critical verbiage, releasing rhymes and more rhymes in kilometric, crazy and difficult to understand lyrics. Although they are also skilled, as the title of We Make Hits indicates, in combining pogo and groove, although, as they point out in the lyrics: “Now we make hits (but not hits like Nile Rodgers).”
Epileptic punk-funk is the norm in Down by the stream and Dream job, foul-mouthed rap prevails in Payday that repeats the maxim “take the money and run” and the final acceleration of A vineyard from the north is reminiscent of the crazy sound Happy Mondays Madchester. But for a party, nothing like the farewell, with The trench coat museum, in which they were joined by the opening act Murkage Dave, showing their greatest mishmash of styles in a noise and at the same time dance apotheosis.
