Review: Yard Act live at Leeds O2 Academy

It’s Yard Act’s world on a special night in Leeds.

There’s a lot about 2020 that now just seems…odd.

Police tape on park benches. Brandon Flowers singing Mr. Brightside into his bathroom mirror. That bit when the Gtech AirRam guy was going to cure the pandemic.

Festivals moving online was another necessary peculiarity, with it going all the opportunities to get up close with however many of the new things that might have emerged since the previous summer – opportunities which, according to some, are the only way to truly judge the credentials of your favourite new artist.

Thus, there were Yard Act doing a YouTube set for Dork’s Homeschool Fest that year; frontman James Smith taking swigs from a huge glass of apple juice or something, thanking the contents of his computer desk for their applause and summing it all up by declaring, ‘It’s one way to do a show’.

It was good, the ingredients were there – stumbling over the Peanuts monologue, debut single Trapper’s Pelts, a wonderful early incarnation of Witness – but in that setting it did all seem like the kind of half-hour set you’d enjoy on the Straw & Hob-Nobs Stage at Glastonbury with about 20 other furiously insightful people.

They were barely even a band, more the spare-bedroom beats vehicle of Smith and bass player Ryan Needham, without so much as a gig to their name. Indeed, once live music did return half of those seen on Zoom were gone, replaced by drummer Jay Russell and on guitar the deadpan wizardry of former Hookworm Sam Shjipstone.

It was already becoming clear though that Yard Act were going to be far more than the darkest days of 2020 had first suggested. Finally able to play live in glorious reality, Smith was revealing himself to be a frontman blessed with a sharp wit that wasn’t merely to be found in his lyrics, affecting a healthy fake disdain for his audience, revealing an onstage persona that’s sort of a 6Music, post-punk Stewart Lee, if that isn’t already Stewart Lee.

The Overload’s inclusion on the FIFA 22 soundtrack sparked a kitted-up kickabout with some kids down the local park, their first official video introduced a soon-to-be cast of fully-formed, recurring characters. Their chart campaign was helmed by Holy Global Enterprises. Yard Act were building their own world, and there was an ever-growing crowd ready to move in.

Now heading towards the end of a ridiculously busy 2022 that at times came dangerously close to burnout, it’s led tonight (November 24th) to the Leeds O2 Academy, in the company of well over 2,000 furiously insightful people.

They begin quite simply as a loud, bloody good rock band, Shjipstone absolutely shredding his way through openers Pour Another and Dead Horse.

‘Shouting at us doesn’t work anymore,’ Smith says, addressing the status of this gig for the first time but convention continues with Fixer Upper, the early hit in early but not one these days you could exactly sing-along to, aside from the communal introduction of Graham the words which fall out of Smith so auto-functionary as to almost be incoherent.

It’s from here where things start to get much less predictable, a mid-song break during Land Of The Blind (taken early, according to Shjipstone) ended abruptly by the ‘bap bap bap ba da bas’ of a crowd still feeding off the energy of that opening salvo.

‘Can you keep that going?’ Smith asks, and the band return the favour on an unlikely airing of The Osmonds’ Crazy Horses. Yard Act’s covers come with their own Wikipedia page – Donny was ill you know, it was their first self-penned hit – but if there’s anything tongue-in-cheek it’s blown away by this furious version which entirely justifies their description of it as a ‘proto-metal’ classic.

There’s a clear link to 2020 on the brand new song Dream Job thanks to its reserved electronic riff and reigned in tempo, but Witness is unrecognisable from the one debuted by that homeschool quartet, like on record almost punk, over in a bang and sadly still missing some killer lines like, ‘You said turn the over cheek/but I can’t move my neck’.

Stewart Lee is back on Tall Poppies, which begins with a Trip Advisor tour of Meanwood’s various pizza establishments and about 20 minutes later finds Smith wondering just how much he’s testing the patience of his audience, sorry that about 2,500 people have paid to watch him have a breakdown.

By then it’s been stream after stream of consciousness, repetition, half-improvised stops and starts, interjections, jams, moments of boredom ‘like Ricky Wilson at the Milennium Dome’ and, occasionally, something resembling the album track. It’s hard to find any obvious comparisons; just Yard Act, occupying their own world.

If Smith wants us to know every day’s a Pay Day for Yard Act now, as the evening draws to a close he also wants to somewhat awkwardly share his appreciation for all that’s happened, and the fact that you don’t get Rich enough from selling out the Academy in today’s world to deal with a mortgage for a terrace in a recently gentrified area of North Leeds.

It’s obvious how far they’ve come in two-and-a-half years though. Indeed, they’ll press on into 2023, to Dublin, Glasgow, Manchester and London, before this at one time improbable success story is finally wrapped up and consigned to history.

They end tonight back where they started, as a bloody good rock band on a manic performance of The Overload, Smith warning the crowd that there’ll be no fake encores, that stamping of feet and loud applause is needed for a return, as if the response on this sold-out, landmark hometown occasion was ever going bring anything else.

It sure is another way to do a show.