What we’ve been listening to…Yard Act, Silverbacks, English Teacher, Eades, PARK

By Jon Milton

A few months ago, I received what looked like a pizza menu through the post, which on closer inspection turned out to be the track list for Yard Act’s album, The Overload. A very clever, eye-catching start to what has been an unrelenting PR campaign to promote their debut, followed on by more stuff in the post and daily social media messages to remind one that, just in case you weren’t aware, they have an album on the way, and ‘did you know its available in lots of shiny formats?’.

Fortunately, the self-generated (and media venerated) hype has turned out to be worth it in the end, as The Overload is a fine body of work. Inevitably the largely spoken, acerbic northern vocal and songs written around basslines draws comparisons with the Fall, but the key difference here is that the words make sense and offer poignant social commentary throughout. There’s despair over our Island folk’s xenophobia on ‘Dead Horse’ and ambulance chasing on ‘Witness (Can I get A?)’, disdain for politicians and the whole Brexit process on ‘Land of The Blind’, contempt for capitalism on ‘Rich’ and lots more. All very sharp, and very much welcome in our current climate of enduring political and social malaise. 

Out on the same day and to far less heralding, trumpeting and formatting was ‘Archive Material’ the second album from Silverbacks. It’s great too, sitting somewhere Echo and the Bunnymen, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band and the Velvet Underground in terms of genre with wonderfully inventive flourishes all the way through. I’ve been really impressed with all of the band’s singles from the album (Archive Material, A Job Worth Something, Wear My Medals and Rolodex City) but reminded myself that the bands first album Fad also had good singles but overall wasn’t that memorable. Archive Material is however extremely memorable from start to finish, and the band seem to play with such effortless freedom.

On the singles front this week English Teacher released another excellent tune from their forthcoming EP Polyawkward in ‘A55’ and their cousins Eades released the impressive ‘Delusion Spree’ ahead of their debut album which launches in March. Another with an album on the way are PARK, which looks like it’s a collaboration between Lysistrata and Francois & the Atlas Mountains. Unfortunately, everything I’ve read about them is in French, and my French is pretty limited, but nevertheless the lead single from the album ‘Reveil heureux’ (Happy Awakening) sounds wonderful. 

Overall, this month has been pretty impressive for new music, and as this is our first round up of the year, I thought I’d list out some of the highlights so far:

• Crows – Slowly Separate
• Warmduscher – Fatso
• Modern Nature - Performance
• Public Body – Reset my Password
• Sprints – Little Fix

All will be on our new monthly playlist as of the 31st January so make sure you give it a follow.