The buzz band of 2022 sound like they’re from 1982: Yard Act, at Village Underground reviewed

One of the curiosities of modern pop’s landscape is that no one knows any longer how to measure success. An artist can be a huge live draw, but make no impact on the charts; they can be consistent chart-toppers but minnows among the streamers; they can stream by the bazillion, but have no live following to speak of. The metrics of success are so unrelated to each other that anyone can prove anything these days: any band can be the biggest young band in Britain right now.

Yard Act are one of those biggest young bands in Britain. Their debut album was a No. 2 hit at the start of this month. Properly big, right? Well, no, perhaps not. For one, it stayed in the chart for only two weeks. If you look at the streaming stats, Yard Act’s biggest track has been played on Spotify a little over a million times, which is nothing: around a third as much as a single that entered the chart at No. 22 last week. And the first night of their UK tour was at the 700-capacity Village Underground, rather than one of the big halls.

On one level, the notion that Yard Act might be the biggest young band in Britain is plainly ridiculous, despite that album coming out on a major label, Island. What they play is the kind of thing that was once a staple of the John Peel show: James Smith speaks his lyrics (which sound good — rhythmic and punchy and full of unexpected words — but look less interesting on a page); behind him, bass and drums churn away, while Sam Shjipstone plays guitar in the manner known to music writers since time immemorial as ‘angular’, which actually means ‘has listened to a Captain Beefheart album’.