Stylish, bold and importantly, fresh, Yard Act stomp through The Trench Coat Museum with a sound identifiable as theirs but removed from its starting point. Growth in immediacy and not before time. An eight-minute stormer of a song which showcases the individual merits of the four-piece. After touring The Overload for the better part of two years, rattling the cages of thousands and popping the knee of one particular journalist, James Smith and friends are back in that studio, wiping down Elton John’s seat and settling in to take listeners on a tailored trip through time. Off-hand lines such as this are the bread and butter of Yard Act and it makes them a delight to listen to. The Trench Coat Museum oozes this quality from word go.
The Trench Coat Museum is Yard Act at their most confident. It can be heard in the whining guitar work from Sam Shipstone, whose continued graft from debut album to live experiences to the here and now has not gone unnoticed. Nor has the thumping, slugger bassline Ryan Needham offers up. Leaning back into noisy punk as a buffer between spoken-word marvels, Yard Act finds itself with all the right parts in all the right places. They had touched on that from time to time, brushed up against this energetic feel of taking a nothing object or area and making it sparkle under spit and sheen of dedicated, noisy efforts. The Trench Coat Museum is another level for them, one the passing fan may not have been aware they could hit so soon after starting.
Always a treat to hear a band learn and grow from their best bits. Tall Poppies longevity, a wailing synth underscoring it all and an animosity, a confident charge, which they expressed through the culturally popping Dark Days. Flickers of the latter fall into The Trench Coat Museum, a pop at style and warring fashion. The trends of then circling the drain and being yanked right out. Buy a trench coat, a comfortable bit of gear. Plenty of space for instrumental steps, the drumming from Jay Russell and the range of percussion he brings is a tactic which served LCD Soundsystem’s Get Innocuous well, and it works for Yard Act too. You can hear it bleeding out the instrumentals, the echoed charms which fall to a little quiet act as an intense bridge into the next steps of their unique punk approach.
Still as fresh and exciting as they were two years ago when trickling out bashes against IKEA flat pack and collaborating with David Thewlis, Yard Act took a breath, managed the expectations of what was to come and explore their image deeper. The Trench Coat Museum does not, understandably, fit in with whatever comes next. Bridge the gap then. A blinding track of sheer quality which doubles down on the impact and maddeningly slick, stylish approach Yard Act has to the overpopulated spoken-word, punk-like scene. Few can do it well, fewer still can do it as well as Yard Act. The Trench Coat Museum is a wild treat of a track, a bold one which cements the tongue-in-cheek yet still vicious and raging style of the four tops at the heart of the noise which now sounds a little more in step with alternative dance.
