ALBUM REVIEW: VI – You Me At Six

As cliche as it sounds, if ever YOU ME AT SIX needed an album to be a home run; you’d think their sixth effort, appropriately titled VI, would be it. The surrey rockers’ consistently upwards trajectory from 2009 onwards was dismantled by a criminally lacklustre record in 2017’s Night People. Before this point, the five-piece were making unstoppable strides throughout British rock. Whether you were a fan or not: ticket, album, and merch sales all stated that YOU ME AT SIX were unquestionably major players in the industry.

At its core, VI can be categorised in the same vein that every other YOU ME AT SIX record pre-2017 could: a strong singles record with an un-supportive spine. When the five-piece get it right here you get a sense that they might be on to something again, but too much of the album falls into a whirlpool of predictability. The band’s most seductive characteristic throughout their career has always been their unwaveringly young, and energetic sound; and when they step outside of these boundaries there’s virtually no hook left.

Things take a positive start though, opening track Fast Forward takes nods to their former lack of desire; “when you feel the fire is gone, pour some gasoline on”, and has the same thick rock edge you’d find on Cavalier Youth‘s Room To Breathe. It’s honest, organic, and legitimate; the kind of track you’d expect from an established act such as themselves.

Surprising as it may seem, VI is at its best when it focuses its attention on being an all out pop rock album. 3AM and Back Again are light hearted yet charming in their techno pop scores. Hook lined choruses and well tempo’d verse grooves – it’s a YOU ME AT SIX you may not be familiar with, but it’s one that is more welcome than you’d imagine. Straight To My Head is where fans of the band’s lineage will find safe haven: the pace ridden urgency of Jaws On The Floor blended with vocalist Josh Franceschi‘s dexterous voice. This is a straight up pop banger.

For all the good faith that YOU ME AT SIX buy themselves back when they step into the unknown, it’s what remains on the record that chips away at the quality of VI. IOU, Pray For Me, Danger, and Miracle In The Mourning suffer endlessly from a stifling lack of motion. They sit in an almost paradoxical nature to the rest of the record. They feel borderline cowardice, not fully committing to pop nor rock, and trying to fill an alternative void that wasn’t present in the first place. The band’s attempt at a more laid back alt rock vibe here sounds too stiff to play a part in a record that could potentially make or break them.

The fact is though that VI does neither. You shouldn’t expect YOU ME AT SIX to be headlining arenas off the back of this record, but the Surrey rockers have done a succinct job at stabilising a train that looked to be derailing. Perhaps the biggest victory that can be found within the walls of this album is that YOU ME AT SIX have opened the door to a whole new tempo change where they sound at home. Night People can’t be forgotten just yet, and the band may still suffer the damage of that record for the foreseeable future, but VI is at least a start.

Rating: 6/10

VI is set for release October 5th via AWAL/Underdog Records. 

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