Yard Act played The Sinclair – 10/11

Post-punk party-starters Yard Act returned to Cambridge for a spirited Friday night with Atlanta’s Omni.

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Leeds’ Yard Act have carved out their own lane in the crowded field of talky U.K. post-punk over the past few years, thanks to the danceable backbone of their sound and a frontman who’s by turns hilarious, cutting and disarmingly sincere in singer James Smith. The band’s second LP Where’s My Utopia? dropped in March and expanded upon its already-strong predecessor (2022’s The Overload) with bigger swings and more groove – and expanded their audience along with it.

Indeed, everything felt leveled-up on this go around for Yard Act. They made their local debut at The Sinclair back in 2022, but the room was considerably more packed and buzzing this past Friday night. And the band itself has grown too, adding a pair of animated backup singers and a keyboardist/occasional sax player to the ranks. The result was a bigger sound and a bigger party, on stage and off. Even in a relatively short, sans-encore set, the band packed in plenty of favorites from both records and 2021’s Dark Days EP before ending with the standalone single dance-punk epic “The Trench Coat Museum” – and they had a near-capacity crowd locked into all of it. All in all, a pretty triumphant sophomore campaign.

Scroll below for a grainy gallery from the whole evening, including a strong and well-suited opening set from blog favorites Omni.