Albums

Album Review: You Me At Six

[Album: Take Off Your Colours]
[Label: Slam Dunk Records]

If you’ve taken even a cursory glance at the cover of any big name, “alternative” music magazines over the last year or so, the chances are you’ll have heard of You Me At Six. Tours with some of the biggest bands in the ever-overcrowded pop-punk genre (Elliot Minor and Angels & Airwaves to name but two) and three self-released, radio-friendly singles have led to much anticipation ahead of the release of this, the Surrey band’s debut full-length album. Plainly, ‘Take Off Your Colours’ is an album with plenty to live up to – so should you believe the hype?

In a word: No. The truth is that ‘Take Off Your Colours’ could quite conceivably have been released by any one of hundreds of bands from all over the country, all playing what is essentially the same music. Of course, You Me At Six deserve full credit for managing to rise above their contemporaries in order to be the band that released this album, though given how generic the music is means that really is damning them with the faintest of praise. Vocalist Josh Franchesci has claimed that YMAS are more diverse than your average pop-punk band, yet while listening through the album there’s an overriding sense of déjà vu. The songs rattle along at a fair old pace; the lyrics are about girls and growing up and you’re never quite sure whether the riff you just heard was more likely to have been written by Fall Out Boy or New Found Glory.

Opening track ‘The Truth Is A Terrible Thing’ kicks things off in fairly predictable fashion, with Franchesci’s almost painfully ironic lyrics (“Don’t waste your time / I’ve heard it all before”) providing the first of many singalong moments for the band’s legions of teenage fans, who are sure to buy this in their droves, regardless of its similarity to everything else in their record collection. This is followed up by ‘Gossip’, the first of the band’s singles to appear on the album, which features a chorus so infectious it’ll be stuck in your head for days – whether you like it or not. These first two tracks pretty much set the tone for the rest of the album, with each song providing hook after infuriatingly catchy hook that embed themselves in your consciousness and remain there long after the track itself has ended.

That said, this is by no means a bad album. There are some moments of genuine promise in here, most notably the band’s debut single ‘Save It For The Bedroom’, which is nothing short of pop-punk perfection. Indeed, the only real complaint about ‘Take Off Your Colours’, aside from the unoriginality of the whole thing, is the length of the album – at 13 tracks and just over 51 minutes it’s simply far, far too long, and you can’t help but think that the album as a whole could have been improved had two or three of those tracks been omitted from the final cut. Things are broken up by acoustic ballad ‘Always Attract’, featuring guest vocals from Franchesci’s sister, Elissa, though sadly it’s mundane rather than moving and kills the flow of the album. Had the following tracks ‘Nasty Habits’ and ‘The Rumour’ featured earlier in the proceedings they might well have sounded better for it; as it is, they sound like they were just tacked on the end to make up the numbers.

You Me At Six are obviously an intelligent band, having resisted the temptation to sign to a more well-known record label to instead keep with Slam Dunk. You just wonder whether they’re intelligent enough to realise that they’ll only be able to put out albums like this for so long before another band with better hair and tighter jeans comes along to claim their title of “flavour of the month”.

For Fans Of: Fall Out Boy, Taking Back Sunday, Kids in Glass Houses

Band Link:
You Me At Six

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