Yard Act singer confronts self-doubt on new album

On the opening song of Yard Act’s new album, singer James Smith declares over crashing drums and doomy piano: “I’ve got absolutely nothing – absolutely nothing new to say!” Later in the same track, Empty Pledges, he asks, “Do you feel like an impostor for every new level you ascend to too? Do you have to bluff as much as I do?”

Smith discussed the record, You’re Gonna Need a Little Music, with bassist Ryan Needham in a London bar. “Well, I don’t know if anyone has anything new to say really,” he said. “We’re in this age where everything has to be a manifesto and a statement, but it’s mainly just a one-way conversation. Nobody wants to explore the grey areas any more.”

Smith said he created an alter ego, Janey, to represent the part of his mind that never stops questioning. “Janey is that part of my brain that never stops thinking,” he said. “A part of me just wants to be content in the moment, but then Janey represents the part that thinks I should be dreaming bigger.”

Needham said the band’s working-class background left them feeling like outsiders even after two Top 5 albums and a collaboration with Elton John. “It took a lot of time to get over that and think, ‘No, we’re fucking good. We deserve a seat at the table,’” he said. Smith added that a mix of self-doubt and self-belief has kept the group steady. “It’s about having self-belief without going full fucking Kanye,” he said.

The band formed in Leeds during the pandemic and first drew attention with sharp, post-punk songs that examined late capitalism. Their second album, Where’s My Utopia, moved toward more personal material, including Smith’s reflections on fatherhood and his childhood. The new record was written together in a Leeds studio rather than assembled on the road. It draws on influences from Blur, the Prodigy, disco house and desert-rock-era Arctic Monkeys.

Smith said he bought oil paints to break old songwriting habits. “That turned out to be a great way of unlocking my brain from doing all the things I’ve taught it to do over the years of being a musician,” he said. He also wanted to move away from literal storytelling after the seven-minute track Blackpool Illuminations. “I got tired of literal explanations of songs,” he said. “I wanted to hark back to when I first connected with music and didn’t need to have it explained to me.”

Tracks such as Tall Tales and Fiction examine how memory differs between people. Smith recalled writing about childhood bullying on the previous album’s Down By the Stream. He was the bully, and the song named the boy he tormented, Jono. After the album came out, Jono and other friends from that period attended recent Manchester shows and joined a WhatsApp group with Smith. Jono told him he did not remember the incidents as harshly as Smith did.

A few days after the interview, Yard Act played new songs at a sold-out London club. The energy of the set and the mosh pit that followed suggested the band feels renewed. Smith said they will continue as long as the ideas keep coming. “If the ideas aren’t coming, you shouldn’t do it,” he said. “But we’ll keep going because, ironically, we still have something to say.”