Two in-stores in a week! This time, it’s Yard Act, making it a stacked week for British indie releases. Today is album release date but I have yet to have a chance to listen to it, so like with Everything Everything I am going in blind (or deaf?).
It’s also lunchtime on a Friday, so that definitely changes the mood a bit. It’s not quite bunking off work, I can fit it into the lunch break just about, and will make up the time, but there’s a frisson of “this isn’t what it’s normally like! It’s new and exciting!”. But of course, once you’re in the dark windowless venue, it might as well be any other time.
It’s a delightfully ramshackle set, with a sampler James Smith did not have in rehearsals and drum machine patterns at the wrong tempo and obviously the excitement of new songs. They make the (bold? Not really, but kinda?) choice of playing four from the new album and two from an early EP, thus eschewing all the songs people have heard of. Fair play to ‘em. They sound good, though!
Smith is an intriguing front man, equally suited to stand up of some sort, with discursions on the state of the record industry and what it means to be doing this kind of thing, burying a genuine affection for the people here having bought the album.
Unlike the Everything Everything outstore, what with actually being at Rough Trade, there’s the signing at the end, and they are all very lovely and gracious and talk about playing Forwards Festival in September before checking with each other that it’s actually been announced.