After a whirlwind breakout year, Dublin electropunk trio YARD are back with a new EP, YARD II, a five track release that sharpens, darkens, and distorts everything they set in motion with their debut. Blending post-punk abrasion with the relentless pulse of techno, the trio have quickly carved out a reputation for music that feels as physical as it is confrontational – designed as much for the body as the mind.
In this track run-through, YARD unpack the ideas, anxieties, and accidents that power the EP’s five tracks, from the panic-ridden rush of opener Essential Tremor to the grinding, slow-burn menace of title track Friction. Touching on health anxiety, social burnout, and the uneasy friction between connection and detachment, the band talk through how these songs came together and why pushing their sound into harsher, more unrelenting territory felt inevitable.
ESSENTIAL TREMOR:
The song is a discussion about physical health and how mine has evolved as I’ve aged. A particular turning point was when I found out I had high blood pressure and an “essential tremor” (a common movement disorder characterised by involuntary, rhythmic shaking, primarily in the hands and arms). These conditions stayed undiagnosed for the majority of my life. I suddenly had medical terminology for what I thought was normal and now my body felt unfamiliar. The song explores the conversations with my doctor, the panic upon receiving this news and getting used to the idea of taking medication everyday. At the end of the day I feel lucky for having received the diagnosis early, and whilst I feel at a loss, I have a plan to deal with it all.
BIG SHOES:
Big Shoes addresses the concern that everyone will face in their lives; financial scarcity and the anxiety caused by that. Being from a generation that has seen multiple recessions and now the tokenisation of money (crypto, NFT’s etc.), feeling secure in your income feels all the more impossible. This environment feels like a ‘stranglehold’ on your day to day and prospect of feeling comfortable in your earning an impossibility. Money isn’t everything and I believe that but when you are struggling financially it can feel like your whole world structure is collapsing around you. There is pressure to present yourself as fiscally secure, not acknowledging these issues to those around you. A pattern of shame can emerge and can lead to rejection of it all and disengagement, being “back in a moment” but never fully returning.
FRICTION:
Friction is another shift to a heavy, thudding, thrashy tune. When writing we always had the idea of incorporating live drums as it just felt right with the rest of the song’s composition. Friction is a first for YARD in working with drummer Adam Faulkner (Gilla Band). After a few back and forth demos Adam and I spent a day in Yellow Door constructing the drum sections, a fun experience, and we felt the bed rock of Adam’s performance really brought the rest of the song to life.
Thematically, Friction engages with the idea of social battery burn out and feeling disconnected to those around you. The lyrics are a combination of things I’ve overheard on nights out and reflections on why you have found yourself in certain settings. Whilst you question your surroundings, feeling more and more disconnected to those around you, you still feel you have to reach out and stay engaged. This split way of thinking leads to a full crash as neither thought patterns will satisfy each other, causing this internal friction.
LAWMAKER:
Returning to Lawmaker has allowed further exploration of the song’s themes and message. The song was a part of the early formation of YARD and played an essential role in the initial fabric of our sound. The song continues to explore the idea of incessant and insidious characters you encounter in life. People who are ‘self serving’ and lost in their own motives, preventing themselves from connecting to others or feeling a part of a group. Coming back to the song and with more years under my belt, I’ve seen that people like this are usually lost in a system of their own making, feeling incarcerated and trapped in a cycle they don’t know how to change. With that being said, I think we can all relate to that in some shape or form. The song initially was about pushing against taxing people in your life, now it’s an attempt to find a better understanding.
AUTO EROTIC:
Returning to Auto Erotic, I sought to review what the intention of the song was. Like Lawmaker, it has been with YARD from early on in some form or another. This version feels like it has come to a conclusion both sonically and thematically. It matches what we have seen it induce live, building to a wash of sound to fully envelope an audience member. Thematically, it engages with the vulnerable state of intimacy and how we can seek that space, even if in the past it has not turned out well. Sometimes it can be too much and a state of auto pilot kicks in like a safety mechanism. This constant back and forth between retreat and exploration when in that state is the core struggle of the theme.
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All words by Simon Lucas-Hughes. More writing by Simon Lucas-Hughes can be found at his author’s archive.
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