Yard Act interview – how Gorillaz and Dumbledore shaped The Overload

James Smith, singer of the Leeds foursome, talks us through their feverishly anticipated debut

The Irish actor Richard Harris is known for many things.  Younger readers will probably recognise him as the wizened Albus Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter films, whereas fans of 60s kitchen sink drama might recognise his role in the classic ‘This Sporting Life’.  Then there’s his reputation as a famous hell raiser and prodigious drinker, the legendary tales of excess often including fellow actors Oliver Reed, Peter O’Toole and Richard Burton.

Now, 20 years on from his death at the age of 72, Harris has yet another, rather unlikely claim to fame as one of the prime inspirations behind this month’s hottest new album, Yard Act’s equally riotous if slightly less alcohol-fuelled debut album The Overload.

“I‘ve always been a fan of the concept album,” states James Smith, singer of the Leeds four piece who have shot from obscurity to indie darlings and now chart-scaling big deal, chatting to us on a chilly morning shortly before its release last weekend.  “I wanted it to have a coherent message.  I love albums that tell a story – they don’t have to tell a literal story, obviously – but albums that really sit together and have this narrative woven through them whether it’s implied or literal.”

While the Yard Act album is definitely no 1970s style prog extravaganza, its spiky post-punk attack operating at the polar extreme from it in fact, it is held together by a distinct theme of capitalism and its disruptive effect on society.  From its manic opener, the title track,  in which Smith asks “fuck me, how am I supposed to cope In the age of the gentrified savage?” through the likes of ‘Rich’ and ‘Payday’, it encapsulates the time in which it was written (2019/20), the post-Brexit, post-Boris landslide and then pandemic struck landscape of broken Britain.

Asked if he’d looked to any particular albums from his collection for clues on how to sculpt and structure a coherent LP, Smith first tells us the third Gorillaz album Plastic Beach was one such source.

“I always thought that was a really realized record,” he enthuses.  “Just everything about the artwork and where it took you to, it was this island entirely made of all the litter in the ocean.  It’s always for ne been a real template of how to make an album.

“The sound of the ship’s horn as you arrive, and you can hear the bay…  Just the  fact that all the guest stars feel like bit part characters in it.  Like when you get to the island you’re greeted by Kano and Bashy with ‘White Flag’ and the line about “these are the rules of Plastic Beach” .  it’s  just such an ensemble cast and everyone’s in om it, it just goes on this journey.  It’s wicked.   That was a bit of a template.”

Then, reaching to gran his copy from his record collection and show us the sleeve, he says the other big inspiration was the early 70s album Slides, voiced by the actor Richard Harris.

“He did this album called Slides with this orchestral arranger called Tony Romeo, who I think penned a few hits for the Partridge Family, but he’s not that well known.  It’s like a rock, pop album, he wrote all the music and the lyrics and he got Richard Harris to be the character in it. .  I don’t know where it’s set but he goes to Canada.  It’s all set from the perspective of this college lecturer who greets his class after the summer holidays, and tells them what he did over his summer.  It’s basically a love story about how he falls in love with this woman in the Blue Canadian Rockies, and it doesn’t work out.  The album actually comes with 10 images on slides in a clickfilm frame – I’ve lost mine unfortunately – and when every track comes on you’re supposed to click on a new image.  It’s amazing record.  I’m a fan of anything like that, that pushes a story beyond the usual.”

Of course, it is Smith’s own talent for storytelling, and especially for creating the vivid and all too instantly recognisable characters that inhabit Yard Act’s tracks, that have helped the band stand out from the crowd and grab attention. 

The obnoxious Graham, who’s just bought his second home but is falling out with his builders because they won’t take cash in hand, brought their breakthrough single ‘Fixer Upper’ to life. 

Or the nameless character who voices ‘Rich’, who has accumulated his wealth – he thinks – “almost by accident” and is haunted by the thought of returning to penury and the fact that “people hate you for it”.  It’s these often familiar stories and the people painted within them that bring the politics of The Overload into focus and avoid the crass simplicity of preaching.

“Stories are how we pass on information really,” he says. “it doesn’t matter if they’re true or not – don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story!  If you remove people from it then it’s just sloganeering.  It gets vicious.  If you put the humanity back into it to give you something to build on, it gives you the grounding point for a conversation.  It’s not a conversation if you’re just telling people what you believe.”

Even the over excited, brimming with discontent figure that Smith portrays in the band’s live shows and videos is a character of sorts, he admits.  It’s certainly far removed from the calm and jovial person who converses with us intelligently and patiently in this interview.

We only really get a glimpse of the ‘real’ Smith on the album’s closing song ‘100% Endurance’, a touching and optimistic moment after the previous 10 tracks of bubbling over bile and discontent.  On the surface, it’s a song about extraterrestrials arriving on earth, but underneath it’s a touching tribute to the human spirit.  Was it important to him to leave people feeling inspired, we ask?

“Yeah, completely.  It felt important to put a bit more of me and less of a character on the last track, because, you know, the character I pretend to play in Yard Act is like an amplified version of me, and a certain side of my personality that’s sarcastic and sneering and that.   As I’m completely aware that’s a defence mechanism in itself, it’s a way of me saving face and keeping myself at arm’s length from people.

“As Yard Act have got more popular it’s something that I’ve ramped up, particularly in the live shows, to shield myself.  It’s become more important the more exposed or isolated from people I feel.  But at the same time, and I’m aware I can tell you what I think I am because that’s what I want people to think, but when I get to know people I am genuinely quite optimistic and quite laid back and quite positive about things.  Most of the time anyway, we all have our blips.

“It was important to put it at the end, because I didn’t want this project, or this album, to be seen as this sour note.  Because that drains it of the complexity that I’ve talked about in everything we’ve done so far.  It isn’t one way or the other.  And it Is what I do believe.”

Smith says as the last track written for the album, it felt a good way to open up the doors for Yard Act’s future material.  “To kind of say ‘we’re about more than what you’ve heard and this is where we could go’. .   I couldn’t have written that song when I wrote the early tunes.”

And indeed, despite the extensive dispatches from the front line of the Culture Wars that constitute The Overload and a lack of faith in our political system’s ability to deliver serious change, Smith’s optimism is sincere and based on the next generation, “because they’re creating the world.” 

“That’s despite the fact I haven’t got a fucking clue how Tik Tok works and why young people want to stare at it all day!  I’m quite comfortable not being, as well.  As long as I’m not jaded or bitter I’m kind of happy to let other people carry the torch really.

“I think they’re pretty switched on.  As people always have been – it’s all about ideas and they transcend age, you know.  I think they are way more aware of the problems their generation is going to be facing.   I do have faith that they’ll work their way through it.”

Buy your vinyl copy of The Overload here