Interview You Me At Six: ‘I Didn’t Enjoy Being In The Band. It Wasn’t Fun’

With the band’s last album, 2011’s ‘Sinners Never Sleep’, You Me At Six faced some of their greatest challenges. From headlining stages at Download Festival, to shifting tickets for Wembley Arena, few were easily accomplished, but somehow, they managed to pull them off. It was then that they realised - despite all of their victories - in order to move forward, they had some damage to repair. The band cut themselves free of the business ties that had put so much pressure on them. With their slate wiped clean, a weight was lifted from their shoulders and they found themselves in a much more positive mindset.

“I guess, in our band,” explains frontman Josh Franceschi, “we got to the point where… Well, I can only speak for myself: I didn’t enjoy being in the band, it wasn’t fun. I didn’t enjoy being on tour with these guys and I think because I was being a miserable bastard, they probably didn’t enjoy being on tour with me. All that negativity was built from our label not doing their job and our management at the time not meeting the guidelines. I think when you get pushed so far against a wall, you need that rebirth. That’s what pre-production and recording [the band’s new album] was for us: solidifying the friendships that we already had, and it just really meant that there was no outside pressure or outside restraint from somebody. There was nobody to be pissed off at because it was just us five.”

“After Reading 2012,” continues guitarist Max Helyer, “it felt like there was a lot of stuff going on internally in the band; we left our old management, we left our record label. We were basically free agents and it became similar to how we started the band. It was really nice to have that freedom. It was just us, we were writing a new album and we thought, let’s just enjoy ourselves. It made us all gel together as a band a lot more. I think that shines out in the songwriting. ‘Cavalier Youth’ is definitely a much more uplifting and positive record, but I think that’s because us five in the band were having a lot more fun. We went into a place for five weeks in total. It was kind of like uni; go live together, go play music whenever you want to, there’s no curfew. We just gelled so much better.”

For their fourth album ‘Cavalier Youth’, the band were able to reestablish and rekindle their friendships with one another. Joining forces with producer Neal Avron, whose Los Angeles recording studio is based in his home, they pushed aside any negative feelings that surrounded the recording process of their previous album. “I don’t think anyone was focused on that last record,” offers Franceschi. “Everyone just sort of turned up because they had to. Honestly, the only person who was religiously in the studio every day and the person who really cared the most was Max. I’d literally only rock up if I had to sing.”

“That was the difference with Neal,” confirms Helyer. “Instantly when we met him, we all wanted to record with him; it was a no brainer. Even the first day in pre-production, we all understood each other’s vibe. I think he shaped us all to be better songwriters. He’s a great songwriter and I think he also made us, in the band, realise how to approach situations and talk to one another about writing music. We didn’t want to let him down. He doesn’t work with artists that he are just gonna pay him loads of money. He wants to work with artists that he can say, ‘I wanted to work with them and I’ve done a really good job of it’.”

With the right support system ‘This is the strongest our band has ever been’ - Max Helyer – or as bassist Matt Barnes puts it, “stick us in a room with a guitar and some nice people and we work so much better” - the band felt able to experiment a little more. “It sounds strange,” Josh explains, “but it’s the first record that we’re putting out where I don’t feel like, as a lyricist, I’m getting stuff off my chest. It’s easier to talk about it without thinking, ‘Oh s**t, people are gonna know what I really think about that’. This record has been more liberating. We’ve definitely tried lots of things that we’ve never tried before. I hope when people listen to it, they think, ‘Oh yeah, this is still YMAS, but they’ve definitely tried something different’.”

It’s not lost on them that they’re about to release their fourth album either. While many of the peers they held when they were younger have now dropped away or transformed, they’re happy with their evolution. “This is basically what You Me At Six has always wanted to sound like,” confirms Barnes, “it’s just taken some time. It takes bands this long. I believe that if ‘Take Off Your Colours’, ‘Hold Me Down’ and ‘Sinners Never Sleep’ hadn’t happened, we couldn’t have written this album. They’re there for a reason.” “You Me At Six are a band that have stuck through everything,” adds Helyer, “we’ve not broken up over it. We’ve developed and finally started to work our way up. We worked through the hard times.”

“Lots of other bands have had opportunities where they’ve played in local bands,” Josh continues, “might’ve done the teething process of finding what stuff they want to write, whereas we got really unbelievably lucky and with ‘Take Off Your Colours’ and went from doing nothing to doing 2,000 people in London. We knew that whatever happened next, there was gonna be a chunk of people listening. Again, we were still trying to figure out how to be songwriters at that time, so it’s almost like ‘Cavalier Youth’ is our first proper, proper album. All of the songs in our back catalogue, we love playing, and are important to us, but I’m not sure if the rest of those records represent what our band is now.”

“Eight years on,” concludes Helyer, “we’re still playing music and we feel like it’s the best we’ve ever been as a band. Not just internally, but musically as well, this is the strongest our band has ever been.”

You Me At Six’s ‘Cavalier Youth’ is out now.

Taken from the new, free DIY Weekly, available to read online or to download on iPad now.