<\/p>\n
Yard Act, photo by James Winstanley<\/p>\n
Yard Act have announced their third album, You\u2019re Gonna Need A Little Music. Arriving on July 17 via Island, the Leeds post-punk quartet\u2019s follow-up to 2024\u2019s Where\u2019s My Utopia? marks a major creative advancement with the embrace of a newly focused recording process guided by their own ambitions, rather than external pressures. To preview the set, they\u2019ve shared the lead single, \u201cRedeemer,\u201d set to a disquieting music video.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think most bands\u2019 best stuff comes around the 3rd or 4th album where they really outgrow their influences and become their own thing,\u201d says frontman James Smith. Adds bassist Ryan Needham: \u201cI keep saying, it\u2019s like Blur. This is Parklife. The first album they were doing the genre-y thing; the second one was a kick against that but they didn\u2019t really know what they were doing, and then they made Parklife, which was the perfect distillation of it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yard Act \u2013 Smith, Needham, guitarist Sam Shjipstone and drummer Jay Russell \u2013 recorded You\u2019re Gonna Need A Little Music between their Leeds homebase and Los Angeles, where they worked with celebrated producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen. After crafting the oddball, angular No Wave of 2022\u2019s Mercury Prize-winning The Overload on a laptop and carving out time for their sophomore album from an unrelenting touring schedule, the quartet set a solid, uninterrupted five-month window to pour themselves into writing and recording \u201c40 or 50 songs.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Another meaningful change came in the shift to recording together in the same room, which let them run down every wild hint of musical inspiration. While \u201cRedeemer\u201d still holds some hint of the dance influence from their last project, Yard Act seem just as interested in the sounds of sludgy blues and heavy industry, which match new depths of skittish vitriol in Smith\u2019s tirades. \u201cI think the album is about multiple realities and how individualism has led us, in the modern world, to question if there even is a shared reality anymore because everyone just believes what they want now,\u201d the frontman commented.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think most bands\u2019 best stuff comes around the 3rd or 4th album where they really outgrow their influences and become their own thing,\u201d says frontman James Smith. Adds bassist Ryan Needham: \u201cI keep saying, it\u2019s like Blur. This is Parklife. The first album they were doing the genre-y thing; the second one was a kick against that but they didn\u2019t really know what they were doing, and then they made Parklife, which was the perfect distillation of it all.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You\u2019re Gonna Need A Little Music is available to pre-order now. Watch the \u201cRedeemer\u201d video below and read on for the full tracklist.<\/p>\n