Straight Up Random

Straight Up Random had the chance to catch up with UK rockers You Me At Six before their show at the House of Blues in Orlando, FL as a part of the Noise Tour. The band talks about touring, their new album Sinners Never Sleep, which comes out in North America on Jan 24th, as well as their upcoming plans which includes a co-headlining trek in the U.S. in January/February.

SUR: Can you introduce yourselves?

I’m Max, I play guitar for You Me At Six.

I’m Josh and I sing.

SUR: Alright, and how has the Noise Tour been?

Max: It’s been really good for us. Last time we were back in America was about 14-15 months ago on Warped Tour 2010 so we’re really glad to be back here, and to see that we have a fan base still ‘cause obviously it’s been such a long time for us to tour. And there’s still kids who are really pumped on our new CD coming out as well. So the shows have been great, and there’s a great vibe on tour. Everybody’s been super cool to hang out with, and just enjoying it a lot, you know?

SUR: So is it weird to be like an opening band in the U.S. while you guys are headlining major venues in the UK?

Josh: Not really. I think every market and territory is different. I think what we have in England is great, but what we have in America is great as well. Like tonight we’re playing – we swapped with There For Tomorrow because it’s their hometown – but we’ve been playing 3 of 5 on this tour, and it’s been like really interesting to see kind of, like how Max said here, [our fan base has] developed somewhat, and just looking forward to kind of doing our own thing here. When we come here we don’t think “oh, isn’t it great playing in England?” We think about what we’re doing here.

Max: We think about the moment. We don’t think about what we’ve got elsewhere, you know?

Josh: It’s like, when we get back from this tour we go to Europe, and we’re headlining like 500 cap venues, which are all selling out or sold out. And it’s like, we don’t think “oh, well, I wish this show was in England because it’d be bigger.” You just kind of separate the two, you know? So for us, America’s a great playing place, and we enjoy coming here, and just looking forward to the future and seeing what we can achieve.

SUR: Cool, and how do the fans compare in both countries?

Max: It’s definitely a lot more difficult over here, I’d say for fans because I think there’s a lot of music in America, and I think it’s like that almost they’re spoiled for choice of what they have so for us as a band when we go in live, we try and work the crowd up as much as possible no matter what we have to do to get it. You know…like, we’re asked, our band, what in our live-style we do to fucking rock out hard and give it some welly, and just actually enjoy the shows as well. We normally feed off the kids so if we’re like “you need to pump up a little bit more” and they start pumpin’ up, we start getting a little bit more buzzed ourselves. It’s nice to have something like that because it really makes you kind of want to go out there, determined you’re going to win over these kids, and they’re going to go away from the shows going “oh, that band You Me At Six were really good tonight.” It’s nice to have that difference because UK is – they definitely go mental for it, but it’s a bit more of a challenge out here.

SUR: So your new album is coming out in the states in January. You seem to consistently release a record every year. How do you find time to write an album?

Josh: I mean, we haven’t really stopped since we started to be honest. It’s always been exciting to write new records and the music. I don’t think it’s the same as it was before where a band could release a record, and tour it non-stop for 18 months, and then go “ok let’s write another one.” I think bands these days have to be way more kind of present, and constantly doing something. If they’re not on the road, they’ve got to be writing, they’ve got to be coming up with something different. We don’t go home from tour and sit down and do nothing. I’m always trying to do something with music, you know?

Max: Trying to push the boundary really.

Josh: So I think that’s why we keep churning out records. But I mean we’ve only done three and we’ve been a band for almost like six years so I mean, it’s not too bad.

Max: If it’s on the road writing, if it’s at home writing, we’ll always find the time. Like if one of us goes to pick up a guitar and just sit down and jam for a bit, and if something does come out, you go “ok cool, that was a good idea” you just kind of remember what it is and then you take it back and you work on it, you develop it a lot more, and you just keep building up and building up.

SUR: I read the album was recorded in Los Angeles. How did this influence how the songs turned out?

Josh: I don’t think it influenced it at all to be honest. The songs were already written before we went there. Our daily life was obviously different in comparison to living at home because we lived on our own. We got like free apartments in downtown Hollywood, and lived and breathed Hollywood because we were literally in the center of it. But I don’t think it had any kind of direct influence on the songs or the sound. I think that came from the relationship we formed with Garth Richardson, our producer. Which is cool because I think he definitely helped kind of move us in a different direction, but we still had Matt O’Grady from the other two records which helped kind of…

Max: Encompass the two. We kind of combined like everything. Like what Garth brought to the table was like new ways to record and what he could bring to the table for like especially me as a guitarist ‘cause I write chords you can play through four guitar amps at once, you could do this, you can have all these pedals to play with and all these new kind of toys for me. I was like “whoa.” It’s a really exciting point because it did develop my guitar skills and my sounds. But then for Josh as well, he had Matt O’Grady, used on the last two CDs as he was saying, doing his vocals and that’s who he feels comfortable with. So he was in his zone, we were getting in our zone and combined the two together; Garth pushed us to the limit. He’s not a sit-back-and-do-this kind of job. He’s like “you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to work harder.”

SUR: So he’s more involved in it.

Max: Yeah, he was really kind of riding up the gears between everybody and being like “you’ve got to do this, you’ve got to do that,” but there was some points where we did tell him like “this is what we want to do” and he’d be like “ok cool. I’m the person here to work with your records, I’m not here to change it. You do what makes you happy and what you think is going to be the best sound. I’m only here to advise.”

SUR: Nice, and so how would you compare the songs on this album to your last two albums?

Josh: I think different periods because we were in a different place. I mean I’m quite proud in the fact that we’ve managed to maintain on this record the elements of You Me At Six that people have enjoyed in the past. Like we always say that a chorus is kind of the most important part of the song, especially if you’re writing a song that you want to be, for example, a single or a big song on the record. We always try and make the chorus stand out in comparison to the verse, but we just did things that we wanted to do for a while. Like you know, we kind of played around with our sound and let people do things that they haven’t done on other records and helped make a different record. We don’t see the point in writing every record the same, you know?

Max: It was pushing our boundaries as well as us as musicians like Josh was saying. For songs like “No One Does It Better” and “When We Were Younger,” like they’re two very different songs on our CD – what you wouldn’t expect us to write, but it’s nice because it kind of developed our skills as musicians; it pushed us to try and find a new You Me At Six sound, and it’s still You Me At Six, but not what people would expect, and I think that’s the best part of the record when you hear a song and you go “wow, I didn’t expect this band to go and do something like that.” It’s a surprise element when you listen to a record for the first time and you go “wow, that was really good.” And it makes you kind of almost go back and repeat the song again. But I think that’s what we’re all most proud of right there. There are parts on that CD where you wouldn’t expect You Me At Six to do it, but it’s still You Me At Six.

SUR: Your song “Bite My Tongue” features Oli Sykes of Bring Me The Horizon. How’d this collaboration come about?

Josh: Well basically I sang on their records, and they came to recording that song – “Bite My Tongue” – same with “Time Is Money” as well which has Winston from Parkway [Drive]…It was one of those things where we were like, you know this is a really pissed off song, it’s quite a heavier song for our band, we should get one of our friends who does that in their band to bring that element to our song. And I just called up “hey Oli, do you want to sing on our record?” and he was like “yup.” And then they were on tour with A Day To Remember in California, and came to the studio and that was that really. It wasn’t like a “oh, we got to try and plan this.” It was a “you’re here, we’re here, let’s do it,” and that was that.

SUR: After hearing how the song turned out and the reception to it, do you think you could see your band going in that direction more?

Josh: Nah, that’s not the direction I want for You Me At Six I think. We’re not a heavy band…

Max: I think we set ourselves up that we can go many directions, and I just think it just depends on when we start writing for the new CD, where we are in that time and place and how we are as musicians and what we listen to. And how we grow up as well, you know, because the road really does shape you up as a person, and to be on the road is like a big family. There’s normally about eight of us that go on tour straight-up, so that’s like a family. And you just kind of develop and grow up, and it’s just like, we like that music, but then I think Sinners Never Sleep ,really can, just it can go anywhere, and that’s the most exciting thing. It’s left people with the expectation of “where’s this band going to go next? What are they going to do?” There are songs like “Bite My Tongue” and “Time Is Money” – what were relevant to Sinners Never Sleep, but talking about a new CD and if we’re going to go down that direction, who knows, you know? It could go anywhere.

Josh: We don’t need to talk about a new CD right now. This one hasn’t even come out yet [laughs] We’ll worry about Sinners Never Sleep.

SUR: [laughs] Yeah ok. For the music video for “Bite My Tongue” – how was your experience in shooting that?

Max: I had a constant wedgie for eight hours, and that was really uncomfortable, but it was really good. We worked with a guy named Tim Mattia who did our documentary for Sinners Never Sleep, and he’s done the “Loverboy” video and he did “Bite My Tongue.” We got a really good connection with him so he understood where we wanted to go with this song, and how we wanted it to look. It was basically like Josh had an idea, we came to the table and talked about it, and we were like “yes, this is cool,” and then Tim Mattia came out and was like “why don’t we do this,” and we were like “ok yes, sweet, this sounds great!” When you find a working level with someone that you’re comfortable with and they know where you’ll go and you know where they’re going to go with it, we knew that it was going to be good. Our thing is it’s always good to be in over the states during a music video. The quality is definitely better somehow someway. I just think it just might be the people behind the cameras over here know what they want to see.

Josh: They know what’s up.

Max: They do know what’s up. It’s definitely my favorite video we’ve ever done before as well because it’s not like what you’d expect from us.

SUR: Yeah, so what’s the meaning behind the album title?

Josh: I mean, honestly there wasn’t really much thought put into it. It was one of those things where the original title was going to be “Little Death” and we kind of spoke about it for a while, and we thought it was really cool. It means like to orgasm in french which we thought was hilarious. I remember having a conversation with Garth one day and he was like “yeah, as a parent, you know, Little Death makes me think of my daughter getting abducted” like that was the first thing that came to his head. And so we were like “oh, well, we don’t necessarily want that.” So Sinners Never Sleep was just something that we thought was cool, and kind of represented what we wanted to do with the record, and yeah, just went with it. There’s no like deep meaning behind it. There never is with You Me At Six really.

SUR: Ok so what are your plans after this tour?

Max: We go home for a couple days to chill. Then we have promo in the UK. Then we go to Europe for a mini tour – like about six days and then we shoot over there and do promo. Next year is just like a constant touring cycle for us to promote the CD and make sure like we’re a bit more available in other territories, and try to build up a bit more of a fanbase. We’re going to be back here [U.S] in January/February time doing a co-headliner. And then we’re going to go Southeast Asia for a few shows, and then Australia to do Soundwave. Back to the UK for a UK tour, and then it’s basically summer then, so we’re going to do festivals in the UK and Europe and everywhere else pretty much. Then hopefully we’re going to be back here in the summer. We just want to be on the road for the whole of next year.

***SUR: For the summer, if you’re going to be back here, do you think it’d be for Warped Tour maybe?

Josh: Probably.

Max: It’s in the pipeline yeah. It’s something that we do want to do again, so fingers crossed we can be available for it and we’re asked to go back, you know? I heard it’s going to be a really good line-up this year. Warped Tour’s always good fun. A lot of good hangs, a lot of good people.

Josh: You hate it when you’re on it; you’re like “this is the worst thing ever,” and then, I remember this summer being at home and just kind of being online and like reading my friends talk about how they’re on Warped Tour and I was like “I wish I was on Warped Tour.” It’s just one of those things – it’s a love-hate relationship. You love to do it, but you hate the fact that it’s so weird.

Max: When you’re there it’s a tough thing. It is a grueling tour, it’s not the easiest of tours, but then you do look back and reflect on it and go we had a really good time this summer doing what we want to do, having a good laugh with a lot of good people, and actually playing music to kids that like music, you know?

SUR: Yeah. Well that wraps up the interview, is there anything else you’d like to add?

Max: Sinners Never Sleep comes out on January 24th over in North America and pretty much everywhere in the world. We’re going to be back doing a co-headlining tour like I said, January/February time to promote it. Come check out a show if it’s near you. If not, come see us sometime soon.

***On stage during their set at the House of Blues in Orlando, FL they hinted at playing Warped Tour again by saying “a little bird said we might be playing Warped Tour next year.”