You Can't Hold Them Down

Originally posted on 17/1/10

Hold Me Down - You Me At Six - Album Review

"Emo" is something of a contentious term in the music industry. Mainly because its actualy meaning has been diluted in a sea of depressed middle class kids and eyeliner, but mainly because of bands like You Me At Six's insistence that it can't be used to describe them. Note: If you have to say you aren't emo, chances are you probably are. Their first album did little to quell the naysayers, fitting just about all criteria for an emo band:

- All members have identical haircuts
- 5 members, so when they pose for photos they can look like the 'Flying V' from the Mighty Ducks film
- The drummer is the best talent in the band
- The bass is non-existant
- All songs have some sort of continuous drone of a 3-chord wonder throughout playing in the background
- All songs are sung through the nose.
- There's some pathetic attempt at screaming on a song somewhere
- The majority, if not all songs are about girls and how bad they are to guys

Check x8. However, this didn't make you hate You Me At Six too much, so there was some potential there. Whether or not they've realised it with their second album is up for debate however.

Opener The Consequence seems to get the whole checklist out the way first, but in doing so manages to sound like Careful did on Brand New Eyes by Paramore, it sounded like the band had made progress. It sort of filled you with hope, and made you think "hey, maybe this whole thing wont suck." Whether or not it does is down to personal taste more than anything else, because a lot of the energy that made them semi-credible first time out seems to have been replaced by 5 kids (who are middle-class by the way, they're from Surrey) who now know what they're doing. The energy was necessary first time out, as it made up for their deficenies. They're learned a few notes and grown a bass player this time out though, so they tried to sound more like bands who have managed to live with and sort of shakr off the emo tag, a la Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance. Those bands showed that they weren't whiny kids, and with varying degrees of success went on to be something completely different, which is what YMAS have tried with their second album.

The nasal girl bashing is still there "You're not on my list of things to do/cause i've already done you" and while it's not as instantly catchy as album #1, you can still identify with most of it, and multiple listens shows how layered the songs actually are, hence showing how much they've progressed in such a short time. A lot of the growth has surely came from Paramore (any chance to big them up I guess), who they're currently touring with and who also have had to endure the tag of emo from certain quarters.

Self-deprecation is always something prevalent in work like this, and there's a line from closing track Fireworks that can be taken a number of ways; "So this is the end, of you and me/We had a good run,/now I am setting you free" Either it's waa waa my emo girlfriend hates me she's better off without me because I am the reason for all lifes problems or a message, a statement from the band showing where they feel they are and where they can go in the future. Personally, I hope they follow up on it, because the growth from two albums shows that they can go places. That and by then they should be more credible, thus less embarassing to buy or admit to liking.