The instore is dead, long live the outstore, or rather than squeezing a band and 100 punters between the racks into a record shop, how about booking a proper venue for the same job; a cut-price, close-quarters preview gig timed to land on or around the day a new album drops. It’s a smart move, and one Assai Records has been exploiting to the max this last couple of years.
This year alone, the chain has already put Yungblud and Mumford & Sons through Dundee’s Livehouse in recent months, a room that’s hardly poky itself, but still a universe away from the Hydro-sized enormo-domes both those acts can usually fill. Thankfully, Thursday’s gig was on a much smaller scale: Yard Act, La Belle Angele, one night only, and a queue round the block for a chance to hear the new record before anyone else in the country.
That record is You’re Gonna Need A Little Music, album number three, and the Leeds band didn’t hang about, straight into it, the whole thing, front to back, delivered with a trademark swagger. Only a band who 100% trust their material would bet the first half of the set on songs nobody in the room had even heard yet and rightly so. Empty Pledges opened things on edge, all coiled tension, before New Beginnings and Tall Tales tipped the crowd from polite curiosity into something closer to a moshpit.
Frontman James Smith has never been the shy when it comes to between song banter so at the first opportunity he was off reminiscing about their last gig in the city at The Caves a few years back (also an Assai outstore), and a tale of trying an Irn Bru float, and an oddly well-researched detour into the city’s Italian-immigrant heritage via its ice cream parlours.
The new songs hold up under closer scrutiny. Cherophobe Rock was over almost before it began but left a chorus behind that people were still singing back at him. Thrill of the Chase saw Smith’s vocal transform into rapid-fire spoken word, locked tight to the rhythm section, while Janey Said slowed the pace right down without losing any of the momentum, a reminder that this band doesn’t rely on just the higher tempo tracks to hold a crowd. Recent 6Music favourite, Redeemer got the loudest response of the night, and Talky Talky People quietly stole the show: a brighter, almost hopeful turn that still carries the wry social bite Yard Act built their name on. Over the Barrel brought the new material to a close on something more atmospheric than triumphant and it landed. Where The Overload made its name on quick-witted state-of-the-nation snark and Where’s My Utopia? went off chasing every genre it could find, this one splits the difference — sharper than the second record, broader than the first, and the most confident Yard Act have sounded on a stage yet.
Once the album was done, Smith threw the set open to requests, meaning no two nights on this run will look quite the same. Edinburgh mostly wanted the old stuff: cuts from 2022’s The Overload and one pull from Where’s My Utopia? went down like greatest hits.
For a gig sold as a record-shop tie-in, this felt like far more than a promotional afterthought. Yard Act treated it like a proper show, and Edinburgh got the new album a full twelve hours before the rest of the country even had the chance to press play. Win Win!
Words: Rob Alexander
Pictures: Calum Mackintosh @ayecandyphotography