Tiny Desk Meets SXSW: Yard Act

Every year, NPR Music participates in the SXSW music festival, whether it's curating a stage or simply attending hundreds of shows at the annual event in Austin, Texas. In 2020, the festival was canceled due to the pandemic, but it returned last March as an online festival. We programmed a virtual "stage" of Tiny Desk (home) concerts in 2021 in a series called Tiny Desk Meets SXSW. This year we return again, virtually, with another round of Tiny Desk Meets SXSW: four videos filmed in various locations, all of them full of surprises.

Bob Boilen | March 21, 2022
Before the English band Yard Act set foot on stage at the Trades Club in Hebden Bridge, England, the band set up its instruments in the green room and performed this Tiny Desk (home) concert. It’s a fitting location for the band from Leeds, which has around 70 shows lined up to celebrate its debut album The Overload including the SXSW music festival in Austin, Texas. Yard Act’s music is filled with brash sounds aimed at capitalism, equality, or lack thereof, and all done with both venom and humor.

Jay Russell’s drum machine sits on a tiny table and kicks off the song, with Ryan Needham’s simple bassline and Sam Shjipstone’s guitar tones setting the backdrop for James Smith’s narrations. “Rich” is our opener, a song that James Smith wrote imagining a world where one might actually make music for a living. James Smith told me that it was a kind of “hypothetical exercise in what I’d do if all of a sudden I had a lot of money, as someone who’s never had money and never expected to.” The lyrics humorously imagine the song being used in Hollywood films where the protagonist gets rich, and in turn making James rich. It’s a searing, tongue-in-cheek look at capitalism and our money-obsessed culture, a theme that takes different forms through different characters in this wry and compelling five-song set.

SET LIST
“Rich”
“Payday”
“Land Of The Blind”
“Fixer Upper”
“100% Endurance”

MUSICIANS
James Smith: vocals
Samuel Shjipstone: guitar
Ryan Needham: bass
Jay Russell: drum machine

CREDITS
Video: Jonny Ridout
Audio: Pete Flinton, Jay Russell
Recorded at the Trades Club green room, Hebden Bridge

TINY DESK TEAM
Producer: Bob Boilen
Video Producer: Joshua Bryant
Audio Mastering: Josh Rogosin
Tiny Production Team: Bobby Carter, Kara Frame, Maia Stern, Ashley Pointer
Executive Producer: Keith Jenkins
Senior VP, Programming: Anya Grundmann

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