Yachts 2nd and final (or is it…read on) album wasn’t quite the equal of their debut but it was still pretty darn good. I’m sure I remember at the time there was a reason for this title, them being on Radar Records they really weren’t without it, but cannot recall what hat might have been.

The band had toured the US with The Who and Joe Jackson in support of their debut album. This time around Yachts were produced by ace Punk/New Wave favourite Martin Rushent (The Stranglers, Buzzcocks, Generation X, 999 and of course the eighties-est album of the 80’s, “Dare” by the Human League). It’s a great sounding record very much in the vein of the first, crunching guitars, swirling 60’s keyboards and even the odd synthesizer here and there to bring it up to date, great tunes and still those slightly snarky lyrics (“Lonely girl I saw you sitting there, with a bunch of squares, obviously you needed me”). Side 2 begins with a creditable stab at the Northern Soul classic “There's A Ghost In My House”. I could honestly live without the last song “Spimosa”, which smacks of some private band in-joke, but that’s being really pernickity.

Bassist Martin Dempsey left the band later in 1980 to join Pink Military and Yachts finally split up in 1981. Keyboardist Henry Priestman was briefly a member of both Yachts and Bette Bright & The Illuminations before joining up with It’s Immaterial and subsequently The Christians. He’s now released 2 solo albums of what I lovingly refer to as grumpy old man music, songs like “Did I Fight In The Punk Wars For This”, "We Used To Be You" and he wrote the wonderful lyric “I’m the same age that my Father was when I first thought he was old”.

Yachts are still fondly remembered by guys of my age, Mark Kermode is a big fan, and I often have conversations about them in the shop. They were the subject of a 3 CD retrospective box set in 2018 and Henry Priestman recently announced a “new” Yachts album after finding a stash of old tapes containing unreleased songs in his archive. I’m looking forward to that and would encourage anyone to have a listen to Yachts. 

Now I’m Spoken For - https://youtu.be/_WyvjuSdgu8?si=EEdBHX6PE3AYjbuV