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“I attained perfection / So why the fuck was I still wondering what wankers would think of album two?” murmurs James Smith, Yard Act’s inimitable frontman. It’s the concluding remark on ‘Blackpool Illuminations’, a seven-minute spoken-word tale that vividly recounts trips to the seaside town with his parents, eventually juxtaposed against those with his own child. Indeed, this “perfection” he refers to is not their Number Two debut album ‘The Overload’ (2022), but his son, born in amongst the pandemonium of Yard Act’s sharp rise to fame.
Musings on fatherhood and his relationship with his folks (“I think you’re most in love with your parents”) are resemblant of a changed Smith, who simultaneously wrestles with the trials and tribulations of their success on ‘Where’s My Utopia?’, the Leeds quartet’s second album. Its goal was to merely make sense of their newfound status, plucked from spare moments amidst their record-breaking, relentless touring schedule. Always destined to outgrow the shallow ‘post-punk’ label, the band flex their creative muscles on the eclectic 11-song collection that tears down the very concept of genre.
Ever ones to poke fun at themselves, Smith wastes no time doing so (“Post-punk’s latest poster boys”) on ‘We Make Hits’, a track that re-affirms their underlying motivation: four brothers who relish their shared songwriting experience: “We just wanna have some fun before we’re sunk.” The clearest example of this is lead single ‘Dream Job’, which finds its place as the record’s accidental party number. It’s far from an open-top bus parade, though Smith smiles and waves in superlatives, simultaneously taking a dig at the “game” Yard Act continue to navigate their way through: “I place a bet on a game knowing no one will score”. As they recently noted to The Times: “We’ve hit the big time but we still can’t afford a house”.
Co-produced by Remi Kakaba Jr of Gorillaz, ‘Where’s My Utopia?’ is sonically playful from the get-go. Tracks like ‘The Undertow’ could have certainly found a home on Gorillaz’ 2010 concept album ‘Plastic Beach’, scurrying between hurried string sections and a throbbing bassline. Light shades of disco and art-rock take centre stage on ‘Grifter’s Grief’ and ‘When The Laughter Stops’, the latter of which enlists Katy J Pearson to help deliver the album’s most vital message. As Smith sheds a light on the rut he once found himself in (“the victim shot dead in the cold open”), we’re reminded of the layer of vulnerability that exists between the zingers.
In between samples from their comedy pals – standups Nish Kumar and Rose Matafeo – and references to all sorts of uniquely British phenomena: from ‘Fizzy Fish’ to Calpol and, er, Milton Keynes. Where’s My Utopia?’ marks an outlandish yet assertive second chapter for Yard Act, going toe-to-toe with the peculiar world that we find ourselves in.
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The leather jackets and skinny jeans worn by Noah Dillon and Chandler Ransom Lucy have become something of a signature, and the pair have hovered around the edges of the pop worlds in New York and Los Angeles for quite some time. First highlighted by NME during the Dimes Square resurgence in 2023, The Hellp have gradually stepped away from their earlier indie-sleaze imitation and leaned into something far more thoughtful. Their wild, neon-tinged party vibe has been traded for a more cinematic electronic approach that still holds onto a confident, self-aware attitude.
Dillon and Lucy started releasing music as The Hellp in 2016, with early mixtapes rooted in the chaotic nights and carefree behaviour once associated with NYC’s indie-sleaze staples like LCD Soundsystem and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Over time, though, they’ve earned a steadily growing respect from critics. That rise has come through both their underground gigs, which have included a show at London’s Corsica Studios with Fakemink as support, and through Dillon’s expanding visual work that recently reached Rosalía’s ‘LUX’ album and a pair of music videos for 2hollis.
As ‘Riviera’ approached release, the duo shared: “We knew our next project would need to be a bit more mature… we refuse to become stagnant. ‘Riviera’ is more solemn, restrained and impassioned than anything we’ve done before.” The finished album feels like Dillon and Lucy carefully balancing identity and openness, theatricality and direct emotion.
The lead release, ‘Country Road’, carries a late-night heaviness, the kind of confession you would quietly tell a friend in a club’s smoking area. Its lonely tone is surrounded by glitching electronics and a rising bridge that points to the exhaustion that follows endless nights out. Tracks like ‘New Wave America’ and ‘Cortt’ deepen what the duo mention in their liner notes as a “desperate story of the disparate Americana.” Both pieces broaden the album’s emotional landscape and offer clear-eyed commentary on reluctantly stepping into adulthood.
When ‘Riviera’ shifts into ‘Doppler’, the tone brightens for a moment as hopeful synths lift Dillon’s words about yearning and heartbreak into an emotional peak. And in the final moments of the record, The Hellp land on something instantly familiar to anyone who has drifted away from the club scene. The Kavinsky-like opening of ‘Here I Am’ nods to their early inspirations, while the closing track ‘Live Forever’ arrives with a slow, grounded maturity, built around Dillon repeating the line: “I don’t want to live forever.”
‘Riviera’ holds far less disorder than The Hellp’s earlier releases. This turn inward marks an important risk for a duo once fuelled by the momentum of a downtown New York comeback. By easing off the frenzy, The Hellp have stepped out of the party’s lingering haze and returned with a style that feels more refined and more aware of itself than anything they have created before.
