You Me At Six at The Olympia Theatre - December 19th 2010 (10)British rock band You Me At Six have had dominated the pop-punk/pop-rock scene in the last few years and are now broadening their horizons. Their success has been largely down to their constant touring and interaction with their fans, as well as their ever-evolving sound. Their last album ‘Cavalier Youth’ debuted at number 1 on the UK album chart and saw You Me At Six experiment with a new sound.

You Me At Six have begun their festival stint for the summer, having just played Radio One’s Big Weekend in glasgow, Matt Barnes, bassist for the band, describes how much they enjoyed the experience “That was really cool. To be playing a festival with bands like Coldplay and Bombay Bicycle Club and Kings of Leon, is awesome. Even acts like Katy Perry played and it’s cool to be playing too, because back in the day we would never have seen ourselves in that scenario.” However, even though they do enjoy playing festivals, and they have a few on the bill this summer, You Me At Six generally prefer their own headline shows, as  Barnes explains “Every single person at one of your headline shows is their to see your band; at festivals there’s always people sort of half walking past and sort of checking you out, which is awesome, that’s how you make new fans, but at the same time they’re not the ones singing along, jumping around and getting really into it, which is what we thrive on.

You Me At Six have played around the world, and have an ever growing fan base. In December of 2012 they headlined a sold out Wembley Arena in London, a night which was captured on their film ‘The Final Night Of Sin’. Despite this, they are still supporting other bands, the last time they were in Dublin it was as a support for Thirty Seconds To Mars, and they are returning in June with Biffy Clyro.  You Me At Six could come on their own, and they would not support just anybody, however Matt Barnes explain why they still occasionally choose to do so: “About a year ago, we said that we weren’t going to support anyone else unless they’re a massive band and then Thirty Seconds To Mars came to us and they’re a huge band,and we were like “okay, we’ll make an exception for you guys” . Then Biffy Clyro came to us and we are massive fans of Biffy and at the end of the day both Thirty Seconds To Mars and Biffy Clyro are bigger bands than us. And I think we can make an exception for old Biffy!” Also, supporting these types of bands means that more and more people are discovering the band, and they are not as restrained to sound a certain way.

That being said, one problem many bands in their musical scene face is that when they are ready to grow up and evolve their sound, their fans aren’t always. With ‘Cavalier Youth’, You Me At Six took a new direction, and there was obvious maturing and growth, and even though, for the most part, this change was welcomed, it was something they were aware of. “There’s a few songs that are quite different to what we used to play. For instance, ‘Be Who You Are’ is just sort of like a little country interlude, and ‘Forgive And Forget’, we’ve never really written songs like that before. We were getting bored of writing just Pop-Rock songs all the time […] we wanted to push ourselves as musicians.” And as far as worrying about the fans’ reaction, they were relatively sure that they would still accept it as You Me At Six it was “daunting”.  “It always is [daunting] releasing a new album, even if it sounds the same. You’re either like “oh does this album sound to similar or does this album sound too different?” You’re never really happy.” On this occasion however, taking a few risks paid off, and for the most part ‘Cavalier Youth’ was well-received.

As far as a change in musical taste and style goes, they have basically removed songs from their debut album ‘Take Off Your Colours’ from their live sets. “The ones we’re sick of playing, we actually just don’t play. We still do play quite a lot of old songs, but they’re like fun old songs to play like ‘Stay With Me’, ‘Loverboy’ and ‘Underdog’, they’re really fun to play because everyone sings along.” Stay With Me and Underdog are from their second album 2010’s ‘Hold Me Down’, and Loverboy from 2011’s ‘Sinners Never Sleep’.  “The last time we played a song from ‘Take Off Your Colours’ was our Wembley show and that was because we were like “we’ve got to play at least one”. But we’ve been playing that album for maybe like eight years so it’s an old album and we’re definitely over that!” The band make no secret of the fact that they have songs they prefer and songs they would rather forget and Matt does have a favourite song off ‘Cavalier Youth’, and they knew when they were recording it, that it was a special one, as he explains, “We’re all really proud of ‘Forgive And Forget’ just because it’s really different to anything else we’ve ever done, it’s quite anthemic. When we were doing it, we could almost hear people at festivals singing along with it. And simply just because it’s not something we’ve ever done before we were all just really excited about writing the whole thing even from day one.’

They recorded ‘Cavalier Youth’ in LA, after having recorded ‘Sinner Never Sleep’  there previously, however the two experiences were not similar. They were not happy when they were there for ‘Sinners Never Sleep’ “None of us really wanted to be there, we all wanted to go home, see our families, see our girlfriends, see our friends. So we were sort of scared to go back.” This led the band to think about recording in the UK, however they eventually decided to return to America for it. “Neal Avron [the producer for the album] assured us that it was going to be awesome. If we did it there, it was his studio, it was the best sound that he could come up with because he was comfortable. So we kind of thoughtall right, we’ll give it a go.” and I’ll tell you what,  it was genuinely the best time of all of our lives. So I’m glad we gave it a second chance.” This comes across with the different atmospheres of both albums, ‘Cavalier Youth’ is obviously a more positive and upbeat album, whereas ‘Sinner Never Sleep’ was slightly more bitter.

The diversity of their sound has something to do with the fact that the members of the band listen to all different types of music, “It’s quite funny because we don’t really listen to much Rock music, at the moment I’m walking around my house […] and I’ve got this guy called ‘Schoolboy Q’ on, he’s like a rapper dude, quite gangster, and that’s the sort of thing we listen to. The next thing to come on my playlist will probably be like some sort  of country band […] at the moment I’m listening to rap and country  basically, bit of a weird one!” However, Matt recalls where their sound came from originally and they have not completely abandoned their Rock roots, “Back in the day, pop-punk and rock music was one of our favourite types of music. That was where  You Me At Six came from and these days we still obviously listen to bands like Kings Of Leon, Bombay Bicycle Club, The 1975 and all those sorts of bands which kind of keeps us in the sort of guitar, rocky world, but then because when we came around to writing ‘Cavalier’ we wanted to expand a bit more, we all started listening to different music. Not even because we wanted to, because we were like ‘let’s listen to all these different kinds and genres of  music and expand our musical direction.” This range of musical interests has led to some interesting collaborations, notable their 2011 single Rescue Me with Chiddy Bang, Matt talks about how that came about and how they would love to do another collaboration at some point “We’d love to do another collaboration. Chiddy Bang, we went down to his show in London and got along with him really there and literally just threw the idea in the mix, like ‘dude, we should do a song together’ and he was like ‘yeah’.  I’d love to do a song with someone like JAy Z, you know, or someone like Beyonce. Someone massive and ridiculous, because no one would see a little band from Britain coming along and doing a collab with them, it would be amazing!” As far as what the band are listening to at the moment, apart from what’s on their iPods, Matt could not recommend band Twin Wild enough, “There’s this really cool British band that have just released a few songs, they’re called ‘Twin Wild’  […] and I think they’re going to be one of the next biggest British bands to come out.”

The slight change in musical style has led You Me At Six to get a bit more attention on TV, they were recently on Sunday Brunch, an experience that hugely excited Barnes “They came to us and they were like ‘we’re looking for new bands to come on Sunday Brunch’ and like, me and my missus watch Sunday Brunch every Sunday so I was like, so excited to go on one of my favourite shows. The night before they were like ‘we’re eating oysters’  and I was like ‘ah shit, I’ve never tried oysters before, I know I’m gonna end up throwing up on live telly, but it all went down pretty well. Really enjoyed that, it was really cool.” However, the growth of success has not meant that the band’s priorities have changed, when not doing anything music related, Matt explains that the band have simple needs and they spend their time “sitting in front of the telly, playing a bit of X Box every now and again. We’re very friendship and family driven. When I’m not on tour I’m at home seeing my family […] I love cooking, I’ve got every singly Jamie Oliver cook book you can ever imagine and just constantly trying new recipes. I’d say like music, cooking and lounging around in front of my X box is basically my life

In this years Kerrang! Awards, You Me At Six were nominated for five awards, and won two: Best British Band and Best Single, speaking before the awards, Matt says “It is a really really cool thing. […] It’s very humbling. We never really see award ceremonies as something to get worked up on, and be like ‘Oh my God we’ve got to win. We’ve got to really try and get the fans to vote.’ We’re quite ‘lax on it, like vote if you want to, if you think we deserve it. […] We are very excited to go, the Kerrang! Awards are always an extremely messy time. I mean, the first time we went Max’s dad picked us up because that’s how young we were and I was throwing up outside of his car. We still basically just do the same thing, everyone just gets super wasted  and we just have a really good time, we don’t really think ‘oh I hope we win’ […] all of our mates are going because like every guy whose in any British band is there so like it’s just an excuse to get pissed with your mates.

The band are set to go touring for the time being “We’re doing some festivals, doing like Reading and Leeds, T in the Park,  and coming to Dublin to do the Biffy Clyro Show. Few things here and there, and then we’re going to try head out to Australia and South-East Asia, like Japan, and baically gonna try hop on a world tour and get out there. ” The future looks bright for You Me At Six and it looks like they’re finally about to get the success they deserve.