Image by James Winstanley,
Yard Act have shared details of their third studio album, You’re Gonna Need A Little Music, set to be released on 17th July via Island Records.
They have also announced a string of new dates to be added to their tour, including Southampton’s 02 Guildhall on November 24th
The album was recorded between the band’s hometown of Leeds and in Los Angeles.
Perhaps surprisingly for a band so associated with incendiary live shows and constant touring, their third LP marks the first time that the quartet have ever made an album together, as a live band in the same room. “The first two records were both laptop records essentially,” says Smith. The Overload was written alongside Needham before the band had fully formed; its follow-up, Where’s My Utopia?, was carved out in snatches of time on tour buses and hotel rooms, amongst a relentless schedule of “slinging [all our gear] in the rehearsal space, going back home, and then a week later piling it back into a van again.”
For the first time in a long time, Yard Act were able to settle into an “uninterrupted five month period” of creativity, crafting “40 or 50 songs” and allowing themselves to follow their ideas with no external pressure. “It felt like freedom,” says Smith. “It felt like everything I’d wanted from being in a band”
The band will spend much of this year out on the road, having kicked off with European dates in June before heading to North America throughout August, and back to Europe in October.
You’re Gonna Need A Little Music follows the band’s UK Top 5 charting Where’s My Utopia? in 2024, and their Mercury Prize nominated 2022 debut, The Overload.
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