Recently I went to Thorpe Park. This is great for many reasons, but specifically, upon the grand opening of new attraction The Swarm, prominent pop-punkers You Me At Six released a coinciding single of the same name (and it reached the top twenty, not bad for a rock act in this day and age). The song intro actually plays while you are waiting to get on which is pretty nifty. The Swarm itself is awesome by the way, if a little misguided. The apocalyptic setup is done down to a tee, with airplane wings and subterfuge laying about, along with burnt buildings and broken down cars and a fire engine coughing fire balls. Obviously. But what the actual carriage you ride on is, is not so clear. It's called The Swarm, so like, bats, or something? Big grey bats? Or insects? I dunno. Maybe it's just artistic license. Well worth a punt either way. Anyway, back to the point, it was good in one way because it prompted me to listen to You Me At Six's latest outing some more.
I suppose an article on this band isn't complete without mentioning the fanbase. The prevalence of young love and sorrow as subject matter for the band (and presumably the absence of 1) beer and 2) tits as points of reference), as well as the fact that main man Josh Franceschi is a certified floppy haired pin up, has led to an influx of pre-pubesecent You Me At Six fan girls. I can personally verify this, pursuant to seeing them live, judging by the number of fusty old dads in their work suits, cluttered round the back of the venue on bar stools. One I remember as being particularly despondent as he sat chugging a pint of Carlsberg, probably damning Franceschi and co. for a) being too loud and b) forcing him to miss Corrie to take his sweetie to her first gig. Of course this is a stereotype, and the male attendance is fairly high, particularly in the middle of the floor where the circle pits develop. And there isn't anything wrong with a pre-dominantly female audience anyway. The gig smells better for a start. Anyway, back to the band.
It's been a long road for You Me At Six, or 'YMAS'; a particularly onnerous abreviation that the aforementioned fans seem to insist on. 'You Me At Six' is dumb enough as it is, way to go making it dumber (YMAS: Your Mum's Artful Sodomy). The first album, Take Off Your Colours, like so many similar albums, came out back in 2008, in the autumn of emo's hey-day. Of course anyone with even a tentative grasp of current music knows emo music, by and large, is no more, ceasing to be culturally relevant around the same time people stopped buying Fall Out Boy records (something they shouldn't have ever done in the first place, frankly). Yet in 2011, somewhat at odds with the current climate, You Me At Six have a Top 5 album spot with third effort Sinners Never Sleep. So, when the infamous sub-genre of emo, inhabited by weepy melodramatic sing-a-long choruses and sung by eye-liner wearing fringe-y pretty boy lead singers, is virtually extinct, why and how does the notable success of You Me At Six fit in?
Well a good place to start are the songs themselves. Historically You Me At Six albums (Take Off Your Colours (2008), Hold Me Down (2010)) have two parts, one half of the songs generally being upbeat and fast paced pop-punk, the other half being slower, often dabbling in the acoustic. A criticism of their music has always been that it is derivative, and uninventive. There is a kernel of truth in these criticisms; the differences in style between Colours and Hold Me Down are minimal. Sinners could have gone one of two ways, either making a big change and totally debunking these criticisms, or simply tightening and refining the formula that had already brought them considerable success both in the UK and in the States.
Sinners begins strongly, with the riotous, hard-boiled crunch of Loverboy, and immediately you get the impression of a band opting for the second option, sticking with what they know, but imporoving and building upon. This quality is sustained through to Jaws On The Floor, which, while very similar to the likes of Safer To Hate Her and Finders Keepers, is similarly solid. But it is in the slower songs that this album truly comes into its own. Crash, building around a simple guitar hook, is a slow building, emotive rocket of a track, and lead singer Josh Franceschi's lyrical style really impresses. Franceschi writes and sings with empathy and feeling well beyond his years ('And I know/ I said this all before/ But opposites attract/ We try and run away/ But end up running back') and his voice, in places soft but capable of the roughest gutteral tones, is perfect for conveying the raw emotion of the track. In terms of sheer songwriting panache, Crash is matched only by previous career highlight - the twinkling, heartfelt ballad, Fireworks, the closer of Hold Me Down - and considering the quality of the track, that is an achievement indeed. Similarly, the gradual build of This Is The First Thing, a touching tale of frustrated love, and Francheski's weary self-appraisal in Little Bit Of Truth impress.
That said, the album is not flawless. The collab with metal singer Oli Sykes in Bite My Tongue is a bit meh, feeling rather too much like earlier works, and sits uncomfortably alongside some of the slower stuff. Similarly the seemingly autotuned 'awww' line-break in Reckless sounds tacky, though otherwise it's a decent track, and Little Death floats by rather unimpressively (though the lyrics of that last song did lead to the development of this amazing shirt). However the plinky-plonk folkiness of The Dilemma adds a bit of colour, and When We Were Younger, the album closer, a dark, chugging, haunting track which wouldn't sound too at odds on a Massive Attack album, is brilliantly progressive, and ends the set in style.
So Sinners falls into the second of the aforementioned categories. Though that is by no means a criticism. No, make no mistake, Sinners is a fantastic, deep, and interesting album, and while there is some dabbling in old tricks, there is real progression on this record, and this feels like a band on the up. Francheski's songwriting should be applauded, as being emotional and even touching without ever being soppy, and again, the quality of tracks like Crash and Little Bit Of Truth is such that they could easily sit alongside the works of Paul Simon or Tracy Chapman in terms of style and sheer emotive and creative flair.
One gripe I do have with the band is their bloody music videos. For a long time I refused to listen to them because the only time I ever heard their songs was on MTV, accompanied by one of their videos. And their music videos are shit. No two ways about it. Generally it's set at a house party with Josh and co. dressed like douches pretending to sing to a 'crowd' of extras, whose fake optimism is enough to make you barf. By far the worst is the shitfest that is the video to Finders Keepers. The narrative(?) features two playful twenty somethings having a slow mo pillow fight, followed by a slow mo shower sequence (which still somehow sucks) and then a slow mo argument which is plain hysterical. The director of the video reads 'sensitive' and 'emotive' as 'do it in slow motion'. And this is perfectly clear when at around 1:58 they start hollerin' at one another in slow motion, which is as hilarious as it sounds, and then to just push the boat out as far as slow motion overkill goes, some milk falls over in FUCKING SLOW MOTION. Seriously, 2:57. The bloke full on bitch slaps a pint of full fat all over the kitchen counter. Got some dairy rage going on over here. I am surprised the director didn't work in some furious slow motion Wenselydale grating to boot. Thankfully he omitted to do so. Furthermore there are lots of shots of Franceschi singing uncomfortably close into the camera, trying to look as earnest as physically possible. And the remaining cast members are reduced to wigs on sticks holding guitars, though this is clearly the work of a shrewd video director knowing the bands audience. And in his defence, Franceschi himself probably had little say as regards these early videos, and notably the more recent efforts, particularly the video for Loverboy, are a lot better.
So the album is not, then, a U-turn or revolution for the band, but that simply isn't needed. Any bigger change would risk alienating their now considerable fanbase, which, even in the name of creative freedom, probably isn't a good idea. If you like pop, or punk, alt. rock, hard rock, even folk, it is all encapsulated and presented expertly in this latest effort. Sinners Never Sleep is a cracking album, and definitely the Surrey outfit's best to date, but there is much more to come from this promising young band. They have developed their music to go far beyond your typical emo shlock, forging a signature sound that, as Sinners proves, is simultaneously energetic, immersive, and emotive.
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