After a long saga, The Yards have finally released their new album, writes CHARLES HUTCHINSON.

ALL the hard yards in training should reap benefit in performance, or so the principle goes.

Hopefully it will apply to York's highest profile band since the demise of Shed Seven in December 2003.

The Yards finally release their self-titled album on Monday, long after copies initially were distributed for review last October.

Since then, The Yards have changed distributors, switching to Snapper Music and going the extra yard to ensure the album would finally see the light of day.

"It's the end of the saga now," says relieved front man Chris Helme, who has been delighted by the raft of reviews in Uncut, Moro, Q and the rest of the music press.

"It was very stressful trying to get it out, especially as we were funding it ourselves and through the goodness of a friend of ours who I won't name but we're very grateful to.

"We were lent some money and we paid him back as soon as we got a deal, but he got the ball rolling, and it just shows that you have to give a label an album on a plate these days."

The Yards originally had signed a distribution deal with Global Warming. "That should have been Global Warning," jokes Chris. "Only Myself To Blame came out last year as the single: a slow, miserable song for summer, not a good idea! We didn't want it to be the single but they wouldn't listen, and then they complained about it not doing well, but they hadn't even bothered to get it into the shops."

Global Warming duly pulled out before the album's scheduled release in November.

"We had the album ready, the artwork ready, and so whatever they spent on it has probably been written off as a tax loss," Chris says. "But it taught us one thing; if you're not happy about something, speak up there and then. Instead it's taken us an extra year to get this stuff out."

Such has been the delay in the album's release that The Yards have plenty of new material piling up on the stocks.

"What's weird is that we have almost another album ready to go, but if we didn't there would be something wrong because we're always writing," says Chris.

"We went away to the Lake District last week, to a studio near Grasmere, to record some of the new album, and it's a really nice place.

"When I was in The Seahorses we did a lot of rehearsing in the Lake District, but going back there now in the band environment I'm in, nothing looks the same - and that's because this is the first band I've been in where the spirit is so good."

Those difficult days in The Seahorses with former Stone Roses guitarist John Squire are consigned to history.

Instead, at 33, Chris feels a sense of freedom in The Yards.

"You don't join a band to be told what to do. We don't write songs as singles, and both this album and the next one will just be a collection of songs.

"I hate it when one song says everything about a band; you hear that and then nothing else is a surprise, but that's not a band's fault; that's a record company telling them to fit into a niche. With The Yards, the album sounds like ten bands, but so what, it's still got me singing!"

The Yards launch their new album, The Yards, at the Post Office Club, Marygate, York, on April 22, 7.30pm to 11pm (admission £3), then play The Lion Inn, Blake Ridge, North York Moors, May 5 (tickets £7 on 01751 417320). The album is released on Monday through Industrial Erotica Records/Snapper Music.

Updated: 16:20 Thursday, April 14, 2005