Yard Act team up with Katy J Pearson for album preview ‘When The Laughter Stops’

Yard Act are back to give fans another taste of what to expect from their forthcoming sophomore album ‘Where’s My Utopia?’, this time with the Katy J Pearson-featuring ‘When The Laughter Stops’.

It follows in the wake of previous singles ‘Dream Job’, ‘Petroleum’, and ‘We Make Hits’, and was one of the first tracks to be written for the new LP. Speaking about the song, frontman James Smith has said: “The sentiment of the lyrics gets to the heart of ‘Where’s My Utopia?’ almost immediately, and finds the cynicism first spawned from the same circumstance I found myself in during ‘Dream Job’ now giving way to a more genuine sliver of misery. Fortunately - spoiler alert - I’ve managed to find a way out of this pit, for the time being.

“Whilst the lyrics came quick, musically it went through the wringer”, he continues. “During a recording session in Kettering with Russ Russell at Parlour Studios in December 2022, I was fucking about on a Roland Juno with the arpeggiator whirring away over the end. Ryan flipped the rate so it went half time and all of a sudden the eeriness of the track made sense; it sounded like some John Carpenter doomsday clock countdown or something. Sam reworked the guitars to sound like ‘High Voltage’ by Electric Six and we stripped away the funkier percussion and made the rhythm more aggressive, like ‘Seven Nation Army’. Katy came to meet us at Metropolis in London to dub the chorus vocals and it gave the whole track a huge lift I’ll never have the voice for. She’s fantastic. I asked David Thewlis to recite Macbeth over the end for obvious reasons. The results speak for themselves!”

The track also lands alongside a new video, which picks up the narrative of recurring character The Visitor where the last video (for ‘Petroleum’) left off. Speaking to DIY for our recent digital cover feature, James revealed that the band are in the process of fleshing out this Yard Act cinematic universe into a full film, which they plan to release after the album is out.

You can read the full In Deep interview with Yard Act and watch the video for ‘When The Laughter Stops’ below.