Yard Act announce debut album 'The Overload' and share title track

Yard Act have shared details of their debut album alongside its title track, ‘The Overload’.

The album, which is released on January 7, 2022 via Zen F.C., precedes the band’s first headline tour (UK and Europe) early next year. The Leeds band also head out on the road autumn for previously announced dates.

Title single ‘The Overload’ has arrived today (September 7) with a James Slater-directed music video, which you can watch below.

Vocalist James Smith said of the new song: “‘The Overload’ serves as an overture to the album. It’s written from the perspective of someone sitting in a pub overhearing snippets of all these different conversations from different characters and acting as a vessel, a medium even, for their own thoughts and opinions.

“That cut and paste approach means it’s hard to decipher where one person’s musings end and another’s statement begins, and that feels like a fairer representation of why human existence is at the point it is right now. Society doesn’t prevail because of the absolute, it struggles on in spite of it. It’s our ability to compromise which helps us to coexist.”

The song, also sees the return of fictional narrator Graham, the cocksure home renovator from the Leeds band’s single ‘Fixer Upper‘.

“The second verse is dominated entirely by this character called Graham, a man more sure of himself than most. Maybe it’s both a blessing and a burden that the rest of us can learn to compromise with the Grahams of the world which allows society to stumble on. I’ve defended Graham as a harmless relic of the past, struggling to stay relevant in the modern world, but this Graham is a little more vicious than the Graham from ‘Fixer Upper’,” continued Smith.

“Maybe it’s the heightened paranoia that’s come with two years living through the pandemic that’s given him a little more edge. He’s still like the rest of us though, no matter how tough he acts.”

Of the album itself, the singer added: “Lyrically, I think it’s a record about the things that we all do – we’re all so wired into the system of day to day that we don’t really stop and think about the constructs that define us. But also beyond that, it’s kind of exciting, because there’s still so much we don’t understand; how a hive mindset is forged, how information spreads, how we agree and presume things without thinking.

“Some people think more than others, but a lot of this sloganeering – ‘I’m on the left, I’m not wrong’ – doesn’t achieve anything. Gammons, Karens, Snowflakes, whatever – I find it all so boring. I’m just not into that.”

‘The Overload’ track listing:

01. ‘The Overload’
02. ‘Dead Horse’
03. ‘Payday’
04. ‘Rich’
05. ‘The Incident’
06. ‘Witness”
07. ‘Land Of The Blind’
08. ‘Quarantine The Sticks’
09. ‘Tall Poppies’
10. ‘Pour Another’
11. ‘100% Endurance’

See Yard Act’s 2021-2022 UK and European tour dates below.

SEPTEMBER 2021
18 – Wide Eyed Festival, Leicester
22 – Reeperbahn Festival, Hamburg
23 – The Workman’s Club, Dublin
24 – Reeperbahn Festival, Hamburg
25 – Dot To Dot Festival, Bristol
26 – Dot To Dot Festival, Nottingham – SOLD OUT
27 – Portland Arms, Cambridge
28 – The Bullingdon, Oxford
29 – Esquires, Bedford
30 – The Lexington, London – SOLD OUT

OCTOBER 2021
01 – Sound City Festival, Ipswich
02 – By:larm Festival, Oslo
16 – New In Town, Margate
22 – A Slow Education, York – SOLD OUT
30 – Dark Arts, Leeds – SOLD OUT

NOVEMBER 2021
06 – Mutations Festival, Brighton
13 – Great Western Festival, Glasgow
21 – Pitchfork Festival, Paris

FEBRUARY 2022
02 – L’Aéronef, Lille
03 – Trix, Borgorhaut
04 – Paradiso Kleine Zaal, Amsterdam
05 – Molotow, Hamburg
06 – Stengade, Copenhagen
07 – Plan B, Malmö
09 – Badehaus, Berlin
10 – Blue Shell, Cologne
11 – Rotondes, Luxembourg
12 – La Boule Noire, Paris
17 – Village Underground, London – SOLD OUT
18 – Patterns, Brighton
19 – The Joiners, Southampton – SOLD OUT
21 – Exchange, Bristol– SOLD OUT
22 – Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff
23 – Bodega Social, Nottingham – SOLD OUT
24 – The White Hotel, Salford – SOLD OUT
25 – The Trades Club, Hebden Bridge – SOLD OUT
26 – Brudenell Social Club, Leeds – SOLD OUT

MARCH 2022
01 – The Cluny, Newcastle
02 – The Caves, Edinburgh
03 – Mono, Glasgow

APRIL 2022
05 – Earth, London

MAY 2022
11 – Trinity, Bristol
18 – Rescue Rooms, Nottingham
19 – Zanzibar, Liverpool
20 – Irish Centre, Leeds
21 – Band on the Wall, Manchester
22 – The Foundry, Sheffield
27 – Arts Centre, Norwich

Smith added of ‘The Overload’ single: “We all succumb to fear most of the time, and it explains a lot about why we make the decisions we do. I imagine the chorus delivered by a Greek chorus; omnipresent, and encompassing the themes of not only this song, but the whole album. That’s what ‘The Overload’ is essentially. It’s everything happening at once, and it’s our tiny, feeble minds trying to process and cope with it. Good luck.”