Yard Act: the post-punk answer to an early Martin Scorsese movie?
Donald Trump recently had the gall to declare Botswana “a shithole”; clearly the goon has never been to the leafless suburb of Winlaton, Gateshead. This is the sprawling Sports Direct emporium where I grew up. Upon a recent return, I was holed up in a familiar local. Therein I was greeted by the sight of an old school scoundrel strolling into the pub wearing the very same jacket that Micah Richards was sporting on the TV before him. Something was amiss, this thing stood out like the mink coat in Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas.
And it was at this point that I realised something: much of Scorsese’s early work essentially dealt with the American equivalent of the roughest characters of a social club scene. The young Henry Hill essentially aspires to be a criminalised Tom Skinner. If Scorsese had been born in Bromley, then Goodfellas would’ve likely been called ‘Geezers’. And as for the title he chose: Goodfellas? Hardly; these blokes are some of the worst to ever make the saloon doors of a boozer swing. Nevertheless, that hasn’t stopped them from being etched in ink on chubby arms.
The coterie of Goodfellas gobshites and the dastardly Mean Streets gang preside over a strange sort of anti-heroism: they escape the virtuosity of an honest ne’er-do-well existence through nothing but forthright determination and evil misdeeds, and they would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for meddling critics.
Critics like Yard Act who enact a similar drama in their own pub-scene-spearing music. Like the comic didact Tommy DeVito, if you don’t challenge their protagonists on anything, then you’ll find they’re actually quite nice, as Fat Andy’s unnamed friend kindly reiterates in ‘The Overload’, “Are you listening? I’m actually very fucking nice.”
Scorsese and Yard Act alike purvey the corrupting side of leaning too far into the dark facsimile of a working-class hero. This is often a false idol. Contrary to popular belief in the Dog & Bone, a working-class hero is not an angry bastard in a stolen £600 jacket. And relishing in the mire of dissonance is not a celebratory pursuit either.
As subtly hinted at in both the subtext of Scorsese’s work and the undertone of Leeds’ foremost post-punk Shakespearians, there is, undeniably, a beauty to working class transcendence that neither Henry Hill nor Fat Andy’s friend or the scoundrel stealing the same clobber as a cackling pundit represent. It’s the quiet heroes in the corner holding on to the truth preserved in the amber of a Stella glass: “It’s all so pointless, it is and that’s beautiful.” It’s in the austere harmony of The Brudenell Social Club. And It’s in DeVito’s mother trying to hold on to morality during a mid-murder impromptu family dinner.
On both counts, these two auteurs also show that life in the melee of the working classes is as disordered as the top shelf of a dwarf’s fridge, and that can make it a tricky thing to navigate. This is where Scorsese’s lack of cynicism kicks in and you can, indeed, confuse his crooked characters for heroes. They are, after all, trying to do something. Likewise, Yard Act paint a picture of punky absurdity where you can get lost in the swirl of bad people, good people, down-toned basslines, daft laughs, knock-off cologne, Sunday League triumphs, scything guitars, the fleeting meaning of universal life, and almost inadvertent riches.
In these daft stories, there’s a bit of everything from a certain corner of life, they touch upon a nebulous poetry—a poetry that can come flooding back to you when you see a simple sight like a sleazeball from school sauntering about in a jacket you know to be stolen. They tap into the relatable rough and tumble make-up of the human comedy on the lowest rung, and they explain how bastards are begotten in trying times with a laugh rather than cynicism.
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