Yard Act on Andy Burnham, capitalism, and the power of art as community: “Nigel Farage is a dark entity that must be struck out at all costs”

“It’s been a big week!” declares James Smith, sat in a precious patch of Kings Cross shade in the middle of London’s apocalyptic heatwave. “I’ve just been to the Royal Academy to see my paintings, now I’m doing an interview with NME, tomorrow I’m starting therapy – AND,” he suddenly remembers, waggling a finger gleefully towards bassist Ryan Needham, “we’re going to Dishoom later! A lot’s happening!”

There’s more than a whiff of playful humour to the way the Yard Act frontman delivers his to-do list. Half a decade in and approaching the release of career-best third album ‘You’re Gonna Need A Little Music’, you’re still unlikely to get through more than a few minutes of conversation with the Leeds group without cracking a smile. But Smith’s big plans also inadvertently point towards some far larger topics that the band – completed by guitarist Sam Shipstone and drummer Jay Russell – have been turning their gaze towards of late: the importance of art, the double-edged sword of ambition, and the mental toll it takes when you somehow try to wrangle a path between the two.

Those ideas are just the tip of the iceberg on ‘You’re Gonna Need A Little Music’ – the quartet’s most sonically confident and adventurous record to date, but also their most outward-looking and existential. Where 2024’s ‘Where’s My Utopia?’ saw them wrestling with the sudden success that their Mercury-nominated debut ‘The Overload’ afforded them, on their latest we find Smith facing “the hangover after a very wild ride” of the band’s story so far, set against a backdrop of rampant capitalism, institutional corruption, and a society rooted in selfishness and solipsism.

The timing of today’s conversation feels fitting, and not just because Smith (who recently started sharing his paintings on Instagram as @mrmuckybrushes) is riding high from the thrill of seeing his work displayed as part of the prestigious RA Summer Exhibition: proof of the giddy kicks that following your creative nose can get you. As the UK erupts into a climate disaster-based ball of flames, and with Keir Starmer’s resignation as Prime Minister igniting yet more political upheaval, ‘You’re Gonna Need A Little Music’’s titular message of art as a salve and a place of sanity seems more appropriate than ever.

“It’s all coming together as we planned…” Smith jokes wryly, before referencing Starmer’s slated successor. “Maybe Andy Burnham will use [recent single] ‘New Beginnings’ on his campaign trail like D:Ream and ‘Things Can Only Get Better’…”

‘New Beginnings’ opens with an insatiable Beck-like swagger, proclaiming that “society has not been kind to my efforts”. However, when Yard Act came crashing onto the scene during the pandemic, the public immediately lapped them up. ‘Where’s My Utopia?’ hit the UK Number Four spot, maintaining their success at a similar level, but Smith nonetheless found his perceptions heading into a tailspin. “It was almost like… are we failing?” he recalls. “And we weren’t, but ‘The Overload’ happened at such an intense level that most bands don’t ever reach and you can’t repeat that excitement.”

Chasing the next big milestone, he soon began to realise, “can end up changing the way you do things to appease the commercial ambition in you, and then you lose a sense of why you did it in the first place. Eventually there’s nowhere to go. What does Dave Grohl actually achieve by doing another stadium tour?” the frontman questions. “Doing this has to be about the avenues you can explore creatively.”

To ensure their priorities were straight on LP3, the quartet did everything differently. They moved into their own studio in Leeds, spent months playing around with ideas, and recorded together as a live band for the first time ever. For Yard Act, resisting the looming pull of external validation became about keeping things fun and pure. But as the snarling prowl of ‘Thrill Of The Chase’’s ferocious lyrics argue, “the chase is just a ploy to keep us in our place” – no matter what world you find yourself in. “It’s a merry-go-round. It’ll lead you nowhere. You cannot win. And the people at the top of society have realised that, and now they’re trying to get to space because what else is there to do?” the frontman sighs.

“The division of the left is harrowing. We can’t agree on anything” – James Smith

Boil down the problems in most industries, says Smith, and “it’s just capitalism”. “I think the only way forward is a universal basic income,” he suggests. “The reason we’re trying to reach such a big audience is because we know how big the audience needs to be to pay four people’s wages. If we didn’t have that pressure we wouldn’t even be thinking about the metrics of success; we’d just be doing our own thing. It’s all part of the shackles of capitalism. And it’s any industry – it’s not just the music industry that has a problem.”

At the time of writing, MP and former Greater Manchester mayor Burnham seems like a shoo-in to step into 10 Downing Street. With his policies on devolution, shifting power back to local authorities, there are ideas here that could align with the band’s thinking, but Smith is still hesitant. “I would have many issues with him; I would not be celebrating, but I absolutely know with certainty that whilst we live in a first-past-the-post system – and whilst Zack Polanski is not polling [well enough] – I would do anything to keep fascists out,” Smith says. “The division of the left is harrowing. We can’t agree on anything. I do not see Andy Burnham as a shining beacon of hope, but I do see Nigel Farage as a dark, dark entity that must be struck out at all costs.”

Away from Whitehall, however, there have been efforts in recent years to pull the music industry out of its historic London centralism. The BRIT Awards will return to Manchester for a second time next year, while the Mercury Prize will return to Newcastle in October. Smith notes that the changes still need to be coming from a “more grassroots level if you want true regional diversity”, but the conversations seem like a move in the right direction.

Both band members recall the difficulties they had in believing that, as people from regional northern areas, they could have a place in the music world. “It’s a product of our upbringing. All four of us come from small towns – Derby, Warrington, Northampton, Sam’s from somewhere near the Isle of Man. It’s kind of hammered into you [in those places] that this is something that other people do,” Needham says.

“On the second album, Remi [Kabaka Jr, co-producer] basically told us to believe in ourselves and accept that we were artists because we kept making self-deprecating comments in the studio,” Smith recalls. “He was basically like, ‘I know you have imposter syndrome, but you are artists, and you’re allowed to be artists, and you’re allowed to create what you want’.”

It’s a shift in mindset that’s central to ‘You’re Gonna Need A Little Music’. Exploratory and audibly excited, Yard Act’s third is the sound of a band shaking off any shackles of expectation and revelling in the joy of possibility. They might be asking bigger, deeper questions than ever, but the four musicians have also unwittingly provided a possible answer. How do you make sense of a world that increasingly makes no sense at all? You hunker down with your mates, create the most interconnected, enlivened music of your careers and remind everyone just how good it can be when people work together and share the spoils.

“Music and art in general, it’s the third reality you can exist in. The first one is the world physically as we see it. The second is the one in your head, and your thoughts and feelings. And then, when you make something, it lives in that strange third space where, if you do it right, it can shift someone else’s perspective even though you have no control of it. That’s how I feel when I make music; I feel like I’ve escaped reality,” says Smith. Needham nods: “It’s a world that I trust. I don’t trust the fucking news cycle and the post-truth-ness of all that. I don’t trust my own thoughts sometimes, but I trust artists. I just do.”

Yard Act’s ‘You’re Gonna Need A Little Music’ is out via Island Records. 

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