Tuesday 23/02/04 The Yards @ Carling Academy, Liverpool

Try as you might, whenever John Squires' post Stone Roses band is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is Mark n’ Lards spot on indie-rock lampooning behemoth, The Shirehorses.  Ripped off because of their personification of all things mediocre, it wasn’t a surprise that it all swiftly imploded after Squires realised that The Seahorses were never going to be the Zeppelin shagging, world conquering hero’s he envisaged.

Several years down the road, re-enter ‘ex Horses’ Chris Helme (Lead Vocals) and Stuart Fletcher (Bass) joined by Paul Banks (Ex Shed 7 – Lead Guitar), John Miller (Drums) and John Hargreaves (Keyboards) as the naffly entitled York Supergroup ‘The Yards’.  A reference to their home town’s railway works or the rather fine film directed by James Gray and starring Joaquin Phoenix?  Unfortunately, the confusion doesn’t end there, because it seems that The Yards have developed a severe case of identity crisis in their attempt to straddle the indie/garage rock divide.

You see, because for every piece of Verve-u-like balladry such as ‘Only Myself To Blame’ where Chris Helme gets to showboat his soulful and emotive voice, there’s a curio like ‘The Devil is Alive and Well in DC’ that sees Helme metamorphose into a psychedelic Chris Cornell.  Some bands might be able to pull this off, The Yards unfortunately can’t.

Perhaps suffering from not having sound checked (Paul Banks guitar sounds sludgy throughout), on the basis of this set The Yards will struggle to find a niche because of their inability to either successfully genre hop or find a place their happy to call home.

Photo by Shelly Turner