In Conversation With #088 - Yard Arms
Bristol based band Yard Arms have just released their third EP ‘Sanctuary Lines’ - which is a stunning piece of melancholic pop that takes you into their world as musicians with indie hit after indie hit. Described by frontman Noah Villeneuve as ‘an exploration of combating nostalgia in the modern age’ - they took a moment to talk to us in more depth about the EP.
Hey Yard Arms, how are you? Your EP is out now - how does it feel to have it out there in the world?
We’re doing alright, we’re certainly in a better position than many and we can’t take that for granted. It’s really exciting to finally have the EP out for people to hear in full, we’ve been sitting on those tunes for long enough now so it feels like a nice relief. However we aren’t getting complacent, straight on to the next.
It is titled ‘Sanctuary Lines’ - does that hold a certain meaning to you?
It’s the closing line on the record, it sits with me as a metaphor for the pursuit of happiness, that feeling of ‘we’ve finally made it’, which actually does not exist.
You have described it as ‘an exploration of combating nostalgia in the modern age’ - what does that mean? What are the key themes and influences on the EP?
I have somewhat of a nostalgia fascination, not in a peter pan way, more of just struggle to move on from the past more easily than others. This is exacerbated by the world we live in whether it be in regards to technology, how we conduct ourselves, or the lies we tell ourselves and others to get through the day. It’s a record of storytelling and reflection about people and times in our lives and learning to accept aspects of that once we couldn’t quite grasp. It’s a big ‘growing up’ collection of songs, and fighting with yourself about accepting that too.
There is quite the mix of genres in this EP - from 80s pop to chesty emo anthems to huge post rock sounds. How do you draw in so many styles and genres to make sense into an EP?
It’s purely just the organic result of our inspirations and what we want to hear from a band. We’re not trying to fight against sounding like a certain genre at any point, if one song turns out one way and another a very different way, that’s fine, and listeners are extremely accepting of that in the streaming generation. I feel like there’s a lot less reasons to have to box yourself into such a small space nowadays, it’s the journalists job to house us under their genre brackets.
Do you have a favorite lyric on the EP? If so ,which one and why?
“You can’t make friends with all my demons”. From ’These Four Walls’, I was really proud of this one and was one of the first lines I wrote on the EP, I think it’s a great summary of the dynamic instability reflected in the personality of the lyrics on these songs.
It was recorded, mixed and mastered by Josh Gallop, who is from the band Phoxjaw. How did that partnership come about? And what did he bring to the EP?
We’ve known Danny from Phoxjaw for a very long time and he’s been a big fan of our projects over the years, and he helped dep some shows for us on bass a few years back. I think we were hearing some early Phoxjaw demos that they were doing with Josh and our ears perked up and resulted in us reaching out to see if he was interested. Sure enough, a few months later we were recording what eventually became ‘Maiden EP’ and we’ve not looked back since.
Now the EP is out there, what next?
There’s obviously some restrictions to what we can do and therefore what we want to do is not really on the cards for 2020. However, this gives us plenty of time to continue writing and recording and seeing what comes of that. We’re planning plenty of exciting things too, eyes peeled folks.