Review Summary: You Me At Six have seen where they want to be, but sadly they just don’t know how to get there.
You Me At Six have garnered a lot of popularity over the last year or so, most noticeably through constant touring; and a recent stint of dates supporting the likes of Fall Out Boy and Paramore on their recent UK arena tours has clearly influenced the band as they’ve seen where they want to be, but sadly they just don’t know how to get there.
The album opens with ‘The Consequence’ and an opening riff that has blatantly been recycled from the track ‘Kiss and Tell’ from their previous album, but this can be forgiven, as originality has never been the band’s allure and what ‘The Consequence’ does prove is that the band is at it’s best when churning out bouncy, angst-ridden ditties, and that their appeal lies in writing simply-fun-and-memorable pop punk songs.
The next track follows in the same vein as the first. ‘Underdog’ (the lead single) being the most memorable on the album, though steering in at under two-and-a-half minutes it is driven by an energetic, power-chord based riff that leads into the sing along chorus of “Underdog/ Just look at the mess you made/ It’s such a shame, such a shame/ We had to find out this way” that will stick in your head for hours. But from here on the album sadly loses momentum.
Though there a few more upbeat songs on the record such as ‘Playing The Blame Game’ and ‘Contagious Chemistry’ there are no memorable hooks left and they only serve as a means of breaking up the rest of the tracks, which are all attempts at mid-tempo, guitar-driven ballads, a move that worked for the likes of Green Day on ‘American Idiot’ and Lostprophets’ ‘Liberation Transmission’ but leaves You Me At Six falling short of the mark as it does more harm than good as the band try make you look beyond their face value, as this accentuates the flaws in the bands generic song writing, Josh Franceschi’s pseudo-American accent and some of the album’s more noticeably terrible lyrics, with such lines as “It would be safer to hate her/ than love her and lose her” (‘Safer To Hate Her’). Most of these factors, which were previously overlooked due to their upbeat hooks and boyish charm.
Though You Me At Six do eventually, after much trouble, manage to pen that lighter-waving ballad they’d been after. ‘There’s No Such Thing As Accidental Infidelity’ starts with a short and twitchy guitar riff that plays through out the track’s verses before exploding into a sing-a-long chorus which I can only predict will be a live favourite in the near future.
To conclude, ‘Hold Me Down’ may be worth your attention if you’re after a record that doesn’t require much attention to digest, and even though it was a disappointing record overall, I also believe it was somewhat expected. It is a record that you have probably heard a hundred times before by a hundred different artists, and some of which have probably added a little more flare to the endeavour.
