Can you give a brief introduction? Who the heck are Yard Arms and why should we care?
We are a transatlantic melancholic alternative pop duo hailing from Bristol, UK. We write anthems for the lost, disillusioned, the broken-hearted and the romantics. Why should you care? We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel, we’re here to make music that we’d like to hear and if that harnesses interest from others then we are truly humbled.

There’s only two of you – how does this musical dynamic work?
The two of us have been writing and performing together for 13 years now, there is a musical synergy between us that we never take for granted. We’re very understanding within our roles in the writing and rehearsal rooms and it’s a recipe that is always developing and improving.

What impact has being in Bristol had on the band?
We’ve housed and honed our creative endeavours out of Bristol for such a long time now, it’s undeniably an important part of our musical heritage. The long autumnal and winter months of darkness and rain definitely are always fruitful times of year for our creativity. We’ve had the pleasure of working with so many incredible artists and individuals in and around this city, it’s important to recognise our sound will always be some part inspired by its magnificent people and surroundings.

How is this outfit different to your previous musical endeavours?
Yard Arms is the amalgamation of our past two projects for sure, ultimately the sound we are producing currently is what we’ve been seeking for many years. Throughout our teens, the music we were creating was much more heavily influenced by American midwest Emo, Post Rock and the UK math rock scene (think Tubelord, TTNG, Blakfish etc.) Combining all that with our continual appreciation for pop music and 80s alt acts (Tears For Fears, The Cure), helps to understand the family tree of inspiration that is the Yard Arms sound.

Your new album A Glossary of Broken Humans & Beating Hearts instead focuses more outwardly and is a commentary on the human condition, mental health and trauma. Sounds heavy. Why did you choose to focus on this?
Honestly, it wasn’t a conscious focus going into writing this record. Naturally, this group of songs came together to be the next release and it became abundantly clear that they all shared many common themes. It’s ultimately something we couldn’t ignore in our songwriting, whether it be what ourselves in the band have suffered or others close to us, it felt important to voice some kind of stance on these topics. It’s an exploration of these themes, it isn’t necessarily as heavy as it first may seem, there’s an offering of help and optimism throughout, if you seek it you can find it.

What’s next?
We’re finishing up writing EP3 currently, we should hopefully be back in the studio to record that in the new year followed by a spring and summer full of exciting shows and festivals – keep your eyes peeled folks.

Comfortable by Yard Arms

Released by Manchester-based independent label LAB Records on March 17th, they are heading south to play the Queen of Hoxton, London on April 8th.

Commissioned by The Architecture Centre as part of their ‘Our Place’ programme, Sounding City involved travelling around the area throughout 2016, and asking people for their thoughts, feelings and experiences about where they live. Artists were then asked to respond to these community sentiments through music, an audio transcription of their home and habitats. The result was a ninety minute long LP where 600 stories were turned into twelve songs that, as the Architecture Centre explain, are ‘ as a tuning fork – taking the measure of place through musical interpretation, and that the songs produced are a diffraction or a kind of reverb resonating like ripples across the city.’

Jennie’s work is grounded in the theory of cartography and psychogeography, but is site specific, and artistic. This blurring of creativity, physical place and intellectual ideas work is fundamental to ‘re-inscribing a place with its own narrative….allowing us to experience its complexity and the value of our story in it.’

Throughout the music we hear conversation and activity, clashes and extremities alongside the harmonies. The songs are communication in themselves, expressing the less tangible nature of a place that we forget about, those far beyond its physicality. Atmosphere, culture, belief, social networks, freedom, routine – all play a part in the identity of a place.

For Jenny ‘this is political. As cities have increasingly become places you visit rather than a part of, this is a way for people to take ownership of their townscape. Through this work I would like to state that cities are for people and should be spaces we are the co-creators of…where we can think about what architecture and town planning does and look at its end point – which is individual experience, collective narrative and shared stories. To explore the idea that cities are not simply  buildings, they are what happens between people around buildings and on the streets.’

Our location is not a passive player in our lives, and just as we affect our environment, it impacts us. It’s this that makes a place become like home, or attached to particular memories. Sometimes we don’t see a place, instead relying on past knowledge to create a picture in our minds.

Jenny explains that ‘As we walk through an environment we develop an intimate knowledge of it which is at once the interpretation of what we see and, as our familiarity increases, this becomes entwined with our own store of memories and experiences. In this sense we digest the built environment and it becomes a language for us which is like a two – way mirror. Our landscape tells us who we are and what our place is within it, how we interpret this is extremely nuanced.’

There’s a vast variation in the genres, styles and subjects. Gill Simmons & Paul Lawless song about Georgian Waitrose is humorous, Alexandra Hamilton Ayres created a more abstract response to the line Tower Blocks and Terraces, and Joe Walker and Lewis Toghill made a beautiful piece which drew on a field recording they made with a busker.

Although the tracklisting does not follow any route, it would be fascinating to use the record as a guide to the city, and explore it as you walk it. If nothing else it’s an inspiration to pay attention to the world around you – your world.

For more on Bristol’s Architecture Centre and its community work, visit here.

This year they set photographers the task of telling tell visual stories about society’s interactions with the natural world. Winner Tim Laman, from America, was chosen for his image Entwined Lives, which frames a critically endangered Bornean orangutan above the Indonesian rainforest. Nosy Neighbour by Sam Hobson in the UK captures the curious nature of the urban fox, whilst in India leopards can be just as familiar, as the glowing streets of Mumbai slums show in Nayan Khanolkar’s shot The Alley Cat.

Much more a familiar a sight, but rarely seen in such a way, Gideon Knight, 16, from the UK, won the Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year title for his image of a moonlit crow on a sycamore tree in London’s Valentine’s Park, an image with eerie beauty with its sprawling dark branches and silhouette against the full moon. The Moon and the crow is an image that is rightly referred to as a poem by its taker.

I’m always struck by the tenacity and patience that photographers have. Many go to extraordinary lengths to capture their image, including push ups to keep warm in the Antartic, hang gliding with their equipment, or months hiding out. But there’s also those moments of perfect serendipity. Roberto Bueno was looking to capture some rare birds, but when they failed to show, turned his attention to a small hair grass species and was struck by its ethereal beauty, resulting in this beautiful Grass at sunrise.

Once again the exhibition amazes, delights, and educates, bringing its audience closer to the world in which they live. Beautifully.

At Bristol M Shed until 5 March 2017.

Bristol’s Creative Youth Network and their seasonal performance of Turkey is a production formed through collaborative workshops with young people participating in their schemes and arts initiatives, all based on true stories . Written by Alice Nicholas, directed by Nick Young and produced by Emily Bull, although very much created by the cast and their peers, this immersive and real life performance at The Station is both tender and gripping – just like the rest of the festive season.

‘T’was the night before Christmas’ begins our narrator Theo (Jake Bartlett), in his dazzling glitzy jacket – and as we hear from the characters it can be everything from borderline hell or most wonderful time of the year.’  Homelessness, poverty, loneliness, broken relationships and illness can all take their toll – and the feeling of being alone and failing is only exacerbated by what looks like the perfect Christmas that everyone else all around is having.  . Often through no fault of their own individuals find themselves unable to produce that perfect day, ‘just like everyone else.’ That’s what Abigail (Cirwen Farrant) wants for her and her unborn baby Biscuit, and she speaks tenderly to her child about the eternal hope of the new year and what it will bring. ‘I should be happy and full of Christmas cheer’ our characters feel – that should weighing them down.

Like most ‘perfect’ things in life, the depiction tends to be a somewhat filtered version of events. Whether it’s the Black Friday consumerist fight, one-upmanship pursuit, the hypocrisy of ‘pretending to believe in Jesus once a year then go back to being c*nts’, the demands of bratty children, finding out Father Christmas isn’t real, or  just the fact that domestic bliss skates on thin smiles that crack by something as simple as not buying ribbon. In the pursuit of the ideal Christmas the endless ‘rush, anxiety, panic and failure’ ring more loudly than any peace and goodwill.

Or so it seems. Because for everyone who walks straight past the homeless, there’s those like Hazel’s (Emily Gilbert) family who invite Alfie (Matt Fleming) and his ‘invisibility cloak’ in for dinner. Or Abigail and her sister Jas hand crafting presents. Or the mother supported through her breakdown.

And people like Creative Youth Network and the participants of Turkey. As well providing a brilliant evening’s entertainment and making the whole audience think, they invited us all to share a meal with them, all donated by FareShare and would have gone to landfill otherwise. Sharing, laughing, and feeling part of a community – that’s what Christmas is about, and that’s what Creative Youth dished up with their Turkey.

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Coasts – Lions

You may have heard it on It’s All Happening’s July Recharged Radio show, but you can’t hear it too many times. Bristol band Coasts create charming summery indie that’s influenced by Foals and Future Islands. Second single Lions was recently released on Intruder Records.

Skint & Demoralised – When Saturday Comes

Some of It’s All Happening are more excited than others about the start of the football season, and they are joined by Skint & Demoralised‘s Matt Abbott, in this ode to the sport, When Saturday Comes, acting as a teaser to the forthcoming album.

Gallows – Last June

Fuzzy, pounding and intense, Last June is exactly what you would expect from hardcore emo punk rockers Gallows. Just don’t get involved in a twitter spat with frontman Wade MacNeil.

Reviewed by Francesca Baker

If bands were to be known by the company they keep, Stay, the blissful expansive single from Bristol based Coasts sound like they’ve spent the last year hanging with Two Door Cinema Club, dabbling in the odd rendezvous with The Beach Boys, cavorting with The Manic Street Preachers and fraternizing with Friendly Fires. And thus in the process have whipped up something very good indeed. The first single to be taken from debut EP Wildfires, this is an ambitious band with the capability to entrance.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T34rU9LUc7w]