Was Yard Act intentionally looking to head in more of a rock direction this time?

No, not at all.

No.

I mean, Justin was a fan.

I mean, we sort of wrote so many songs for this record.

There was about 40 tunes, maybe a few more.

And there was some really heavy stuff that didn't make the record.

Insane live show.

That's like as far as my class awareness went.

That's so interesting.

I think what you were mentioning about sort of individualism within punk, obviously, as a reaction, it made total sense, and obviously, I guess in this country, off the back of the wars and, and socialism and against this, this sort of looming threat of communism, it felt like very reactionary, and it kind of fed into, I suppose, in a very bizarre way, sort of neoliberalism, even though it never meant to.

And I, I wonder what you think of how punk music's kind of changed, like the modern interpretation of, of, of sort of more, I say commercial because it's popular.

I suppose what we're sort of affiliated with, even though I don't really consider us a punk band, I only say we are to wind up people who have opinions on punk.

But do you feel like the perspective of what punks feel they are now has changed from how it began, as someone who was a fan of first-wave punk and kind of heavily influenced by that?

Like, you don't have to put out everything.

I guess this feeds back into what you were saying earlier about living with the work you do.

So was that enjoyable? Was it frustrating to be able to do that all together? Not trying to have you tattle on each other, but how easy was it to do that, not just on tour, but in the room, knowing you're going to lay it down and it's going to be on record forever? Oh,

it was a lot easier.

Yeah.

I mean, it was easier that we could try new ideas together and not have to sort of sit and discuss them separately or wait.

You know what I mean? The process was so quick, but especially in the demo.

So when we were demoing and Jay kind of set up, we built the studio and Jay kind of set it all up and rigged it amazingly so we could all be huddled in a, We're not even huddled.

It's quite spacious.

We've not really thought about that.

There's quite a funky element, and there always is in a way, with Yard Act, but across a few of the songs on the new record.

Yeah, so the piano was...

I inherited this like... dust the old upright piano off my auntie she passed away and left it to me in her will and it ended up in our studio I did want it in my house but I don't have the space for it so it ended up in the studio and it just was sort of sat eyeing us up from the corner and because this was the first record where we recorded in the room together this one came out of a jam that Brian Sam and Jay did together and And when we started working it round, like, because I wasn't sort of, like, bringing pre-existed lyrics, I kind of wanted to be involved in the jam.

So I sort of started slowly sort of inching towards the piano and ended up playing this upright, which we shipped to the studio because it had, like, a real sort of soul to it that, like, it's completely out of tune.

You know, it's not a good piano in any sense.

And the...

When we were in the studio, they were kind of like, this one's completely in tune.

Yeah, and continues this exploration of what is truth and what isn't truth.