Leeds post-punk outfit Yard Act, which includes former Menace Beach member Ryan Needham, have released a few singles since debuting "The Trapper's Pelts", and have just shared their fourth, "Dark Days."
In "Dark Days," the band paints a post-apocalyptic vision populated with car trunks "full of stolen phones, knock-off cologne, and mink carcasses" and "police officers getting their truncheons polished off in the bushes." Frontman James Smith says, "Despite all the advances humanity has made, the threat of devolving feels increasingly possible in the modern world, and on my bad days when I’m spiralling I can’t help but get trapped in my own head envisioning this post-apocalyptic future we’re seemingly headed toward, so fuck knows why I decided to watch 'Children of Men’ when I was feeling like that. If I’d fully remembered what happened in it, I don’t think I would’ve in the middle of a pandemic, but I did, and I actually came away feeling really uplifted by the ending. I saw hope in it, and it helped me finish the story." It's a chaotic and danceable tale, with Smith rattling off "I have the blues and I can't shake them loose / It's a never-ending cycle of abuse," in between discussions of the crumbling scene around him.