by nickwan
I thought this music died. But then I realized that where good music exists, there has to be bad music to contrast. And seemingly this album is doing it from first to last track.
Please entertain yourself with this YouTube video of them. Embedding was disabled and I couldn’t be bothered with looking for one that could be embedded. As YouTube user oliversulley has said, “it looks like theyve just tried to fill this songs with as many clichés and random sayings as they could”. You betcha.
You Me at Six, also known as youmeatsix, youme@six or ym@6, has popped up here and there on the “related music” swash with the likes of The Academy Is…, Taking Back Sunday, and a slew of then-scene bands. This “then-scene” was the scene that everyone who is into Animal Collective and Grizzly Bear used to be in. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. This is now the scene people turn their back on and shun liking, only to be made fun of when people scroll through their iPods and iTunes playlists when music like this is even visible. As far as what this music is all about now: played out. Regardless of what is “in” now, this kind of music isn’t original anymore. Nor is it nice to really listen to when you’re just sitting back and trying to write a review (…hm).
The album itself is nothing less than predictable. Lyrics written for the primary purpose to be chanted along with, cheese-filled choruses, and that randomly decent bassist who takes this music way too seriously when he could legitimately be in some amazing jazz fusion band (what?). The album is obviously well produced, but hard to say if it was over produced since the band itself has sold itself to a certain market since their 2008 release of Take Off Your Colours. The best way to describe this music would be… that music that ends up being the background music on MTV shows. I bet you $100 that one of their songs were featured on The Hills or some crap like that.
There is some silver lining I suppose. I bet if you had a van filled of drunk people who were into pop punk in high school, questions like “hey, who is this?” or “what the hell is this? New Found Glory?” oh, on the contrary ex-scenesters, don’t offend NFG by comparing them to this. I guess that wasn’t really a pro, was it? To have, yet again, a stereotypical cop out for a stereotypically bad band, the bassist is good. Isn’t that like… the cop-out of the century?
Many. It’s a rehashing of past songs and albums! What isn’t wrong with that? I honestly think they stole the “Don’t Stop Believin’” cover from Fox’s show Glee during the back up vocals for their song “Liquid Confidence”. Listen to the podcast to hear what I’m talking about. As far as specific bad things about this album: none when listening to this from a production stand point. Everything is tip-top. Even the musicians are decent. But as far as song writing and lyrics go, it’s trash. I could write lyrics that have the same emotive quality as the lyrics Josh Franceschi have composed for this sophomore stunner. And boy, did it stun.
With little originality, and precedent albums that are tons of times better than this showcase of songs, it’s hard to even justify this as a good album. If I lived in Weybridge, Surrey in England and this was the local band that got big and I was into one of their ex-girlfriends, I might be a little more lenient with this review. Sadly (much like this album), I’m disappointed that music like this is still thought of. I guess thinking of other played out music (grunge, nu-metal, 80s metal, hyphy), people still write and play these kind of genres as if they never went the way of disco. But like disco, this will soon be that music people make fun of you for if you are more than into it for more than novelty purposes. And like all other novelty albums than come my way…
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