It could be the sharp wit. Could be the infectious grooves, the unapologetic post-punk – or maybe the disco beats. It’s all of that, truth be told, but leave it to your AMM host to tell anyone who would listen about the flailing-arm boogie energy that Yard Act vocalist James Smith brought to his band’s SXSW debut on the Public Radio Day Stage just on the heels of The Overload. Any surprise that it was one of the most fun, and most funny, performances? Those Leeds boys unleashed an insightful and hilarious character study on their album confirming that, while there’s no singular answer to the world’s problems, it’s a thing of (acerbic) wonder to slice apart the bleakness and insufferable idiots with biting mockery. But through Smith’s delivery, it’s more like poetry for the disenchanted who haven’t completely lost their humor in this whole damned mess.
Coming this March is Yard Act’s follow-up Where’s My Utopia?, via Island Records, brandishing singles like the dance-punk fever of “The Trench Coat Museum” scrutinizing public (and personal) perception, and a few music industry jabs and stabs in the funk-pop banger “Dream Job.” Get it all when you tune in to KUTX for Yard Act’s Studio 1A performance tomorrow at 1:30 p.m. Then get your trench-coated arse over to Mohawk for their show tomorrow night, featuring U.K. band PVA and Austin outfit Font on the bill. Doors at 6:30 p.m.
The way that it swishes and swings. It sings.
