Yard Act Head Up Stunning Night of Music at Liverpool’s Famous Days Festival [Show Review]

Yard Act has rapidly gone from being 6 Music’s best new thing to one of the most essential acts in the country in the wink of an eye.

Their debut album, 2022’s The Overload, showed a band with swagger and intelligence, bringing snapshots of Northern life in a way we’ve not heard since Pulp and golden era Arctics. Their recent album, Where’s Our Utopia? has taken their story to a new level with a driving narrative that includes school bullies, a trip to Blackpool, and some fizzy fish. Since their blistering appearance at Glastonbury this year, they cannot be ignored.

Bringing their show to Liverpool’s Olympia as part of the city’s Favourite Days Festival, they have in tow Floodlights and Freak Slug.

Floodlights are the more interesting of the two acts and certainly the most promising. Having already supported Black Midi and Pavement, the Australian quintet are compelling. Their sound is both powerful and melodic, and whilst echoing UK indie pop, their sound remains unique.

Vocalist Louis Parsons’ deep tones draw parallels with both Interpol and Editors, whilst Sarah Hellyer’s trumpet recalls both Pale Fountains and The Bunnymen. “Lessons Learnt” has a driving Johnny Marr-style harmonica that almost dominates, a very unusual approach in a rock band.

I’ve not come across this band before but after this short performance, I’m certainly hooked and will be exploring much further.

Freak Slug is a very different act and provides a stark contrast to Floodlights. Freak Slug is the pseudonym of Mancunian artist Xenya Genovese, who, along with her band, provides short, punky songs in a quirky style. Alternating between dark and light throughout the set, Xenya and her band are certainly engaging but lacking the edge of the previous band, which works against them slightly.

Their original songs are well written and accomplished, but for me, the highlight was the refreshingly different take on Joy Division’s “Disorder.” The set ran a couple of songs too long in the anticipation of Yard Act’s 9:30 showing. I felt that this was an act that would perhaps fare better as a lead rather than a support.

Yard Act appear to complete adoration from a largely student crowd, most wearing Yard Act merch and clearly in awe of their heroes. The sea of t-shirts and the sheer enthusiasm of fans is the closest I have seen to 1980s Smiths fandom in a long while. Frontman James Smith is in some ways a similarly unlikely frontman with scathing social commentary lyrics, often playing the underdog and sporting very similar early Moz glasses. The comparisons continue in their complete elevation of their recorded material to the stage. Where the lyrics are the key, onstage, quite often, the music takes over, becoming funky, frivolous and downright unhinged.

Opening with the methodical funk of “Dark Days” and “When the Laughter Stops,” the momentum gradually grows, particularly when the female vocalists Daisy and Lauren come forward to dance frantically around Smith’s angular moves. Followers of the band’s videos will recognize Daisy as the Breton-shirted protagonist in each mini-drama, keeping the spirit of classic pop videos alive.

When the band really hit their stride, it is in songs like “Dream Job” and “The Trench Coat Museum,” lyrically superb but also examples of pretty hard dance. For an indie band with a bespectacled frontman, they are way more funky than expected and definitely give Jarvis a run for his money. Even “Down by the Stream,” a virtual story told traditionally on the new album, is lifted to something almost unrecognizable. Whilst some of the intricacy of the lyrics about school bullying is perhaps lost, the anger is more prominent. This is where parallels between Smiths lyrics (“The Headmaster Ritual”) become almost unavoidable.

The second half of the set, including the high-energy work out of “Petroleum” and the anthemic single, “We Make Hits,” brings out a primal energy in the audience, who by now have taken over the entire right-hand side of Olympia with frenetic moshing. Running headlong into each other, beer fills the air, but these are not just kids. We spot a balding guy with a grey moustache pummelling into the throng who is clearly over 60. Middle-aged couples are bailing in, too. This is adoration made carnage.

The set is over too soon, finishing with three Yard Act Classics, “Pour Another,” “The Overload,” and “100% Endurance,” that only fuel the chaos in the crowd further.

Over half the audience leave, but there is a sense that the band will return. As more and more give up the ghost, there is a stirring towards the back of the stage, and after ten minutes, Smith returns, wearing his coat. Thanking the hardcore fans for sticking around, the stripped-down audience is treated to a frenzied version of “Rich.” If ever a band could replace The Fall, then Yard Act performing “Rich” would be the contender. Even sounding like Mark E. Smith vocally, this is no mean feat. Possibly the highlight tonight. The almost surreal “The Trapper’s Pelts” provides a perfect end to the night and the band heads off to Australia and much warmer climes than this freezer in Liverpool.

As close to a perfect gig as you’re going to get. Yard Act is going to be massive. Let’s hope they don’t get too rich and ruin the magic.