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Yard Act’s James Smith Talks Finding ‘Balance’ & Capturing Life’s Complexities on ‘Where’s My Utopia?’
On 'Where's My Utopia?', the Leeds quartet expands its musical palette while Smith's lyrics weigh the pros and cons of achieving one's dream.
The night before, the band played Milan, Italy, and is about to head to Zurich, Switzerland, on the European leg of a tour that has taken the quartet — Smith, Ryan Needham, Sam Shipstone and Jay Russell — to Barcelona, Spain; and Lyon, France; among other cities. The band released its first album, The Overload, in early 2022, which was nominated for the United Kingdom’s prestigious Mercury Prize later that year and caught the ear of Elton John, who they convinced to record an alternate version of their single “100% Endurance” with them. There’s a line on “Tall Poppies” off the first album: “We cry while children are dying across the sea, and there is nothing we can do about it / Whilst we benefit from the bombs dropped which we had no part in building.” I think that applies to the fact that rich nations prosper from arms deals, like what’s happening now between the U.K. and Israel.
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