Yard Act, photo by James Winstanley

Yard Act have announced their third album, You’re Gonna Need A Little Music. Arriving on July 17 via Island, the Leeds post-punk quartet’s follow-up to 2024’s Where’s My Utopia? marks a major creative advancement with the embrace of a newly focused recording process guided by their own ambitions, rather than external pressures. To preview the set, they’ve shared the lead single, “Redeemer,” set to a disquieting music video.

“I think most bands’ best stuff comes around the 3rd or 4th album where they really outgrow their influences and become their own thing,” says frontman James Smith. Adds bassist Ryan Needham: “I keep saying, it’s like Blur. This is Parklife. The first album they were doing the genre-y thing; the second one was a kick against that but they didn’t really know what they were doing, and then they made Parklife, which was the perfect distillation of it all.”

Yard Act – Smith, Needham, guitarist Sam Shjipstone and drummer Jay Russell – recorded You’re Gonna Need A Little Music between their Leeds homebase and Los Angeles, where they worked with celebrated producer Justin Meldal-Johnsen. After crafting the oddball, angular No Wave of 2022’s Mercury Prize-winning The Overload on a laptop and carving out time for their sophomore album from an unrelenting touring schedule, the quartet set a solid, uninterrupted five-month window to pour themselves into writing and recording “40 or 50 songs.”

Another meaningful change came in the shift to recording together in the same room, which let them run down every wild hint of musical inspiration. While “Redeemer” still holds some hint of the dance influence from their last project, Yard Act seem just as interested in the sounds of sludgy blues and heavy industry, which match new depths of skittish vitriol in Smith’s tirades. “I think the album is about multiple realities and how individualism has led us, in the modern world, to question if there even is a shared reality anymore because everyone just believes what they want now,” the frontman commented.

“I think most bands’ best stuff comes around the 3rd or 4th album where they really outgrow their influences and become their own thing,” says frontman James Smith. Adds bassist Ryan Needham: “I keep saying, it’s like Blur. This is Parklife. The first album they were doing the genre-y thing; the second one was a kick against that but they didn’t really know what they were doing, and then they made Parklife, which was the perfect distillation of it all.”

You’re Gonna Need A Little Music is available to pre-order now. Watch the “Redeemer” video below and read on for the full tracklist.

You’re Gonna Need A Little Music – Yard Act:
1. Empty Pledges
2. New Beginnings
3. Tall Tales
4. Fiction
5. You’re Gonna Need A Little Music
6. Cherophobe Rock
7. Thrill Of The Chase
8. Janey Said
9. Redeemer
10. Talky Talky People
11. Over The Barrel