Yard Act has shared “When the Laughter Stops,” a Katy J Pearson collaboration that appears on her upcoming album. Where is my utopia? – On March 1 he crossed the island. It comes with a music video directed by James Slater, who also directed the videos for previous singles “Dream Job,” “Petroleum,” and “We Make Hits.” Check it out below.
“The feelings of words reach the heart Where is my utopia? “Almost immediately, I found the irony first arising from the same circumstances I found myself in during ‘Dream Job’ now giving way to a more realistic bit of misery,” the band’s James Smith explained in a statement. “Fortunately — spoiler alert — I was able to find a way out of this hole, for now.”
He continued:
Although the lyrics came quickly, musically they went through the wringer. As is often the case when Ryan delivers a bass line, it's very vague harmonically and we all hear things differently. I was hearing the song with a simple melody, while Sam [guitarist] I heard a very sweet and sugary main tone. The song went back and forth, and we talked a lot about “Lovefool” by The Cardigans if I remember correctly. During a Kettering recording session with Russ Russell at Parlor Studios in December 2022, I was jamming on a Roland Juno with the arpeggio sound humming away at the end. Ryan flipped the rate and it was gone half the time and suddenly the strangeness of the track made sense. It sounded like a countdown to John Carpenter's Doomsday Clock or something. Sam reworked the guitars to sound like “High Voltage”; by Electric Six and we stripped away the funky beat and made the beat more aggressive, like on “Seven Nation Army”. Katie came to meet us at the Metropolis in London to overdub the chorus vocals and she gave the whole track a huge boost that I will never get a voice for. It's a great. I asked David Thewlis to read Macbeth at the end for obvious reasons. The results speak for themselves!
Discussing the video, Slater commented, “This video continues the visitor's journey and follows 'Petroleum', where we see her being dragged away by two killers. 'When the Laughing Stops' reveals her fate… a prison full of old circus performers. Granted, “Security is a little loose so all might not be lost. The videos we made were all part of a wider cinematic universe than Yard Act and we're in the process of turning the whole thing into a movie. Watch this space.”
