A potential stop-gap for those who feel like they've grown out of the schoolboy pop-punk of
Busted but aren't quite ready yet to embrace the post-hardcore of
Fightstar, Surrey quintet
You Me at Six's debut album,
Take Off Your Colours, combines the youthful exuberance and anthemic melodies of the former with the crunching guitars and over-earnest vocals of the latter on 13 tracks which appear to have followed the "emo-pop for dummies"' handbook word-for-word. Unfortunately, they're not the first to notice a gap in the market, and as
Josh Franceschi's faux-American tones succinctly state on opener, "The Truth Is a Terrible Thing" ("Don't waste your time/You've heard it all before"), there's very little here to differentiate them from the likes of
Kids in Glass Houses,
Elliot Minor, or the dozens of other Kerrang!-friendly upstarts who have emerged of late. Packed with brash singalong choruses, power-chord heavy hooks, and teenage angst-ridden lyrics, the likes of breakup anthem "You've Made Your Bed (So Sleep in It)," and lead single "Save It for the Bedroom" have the whole tortured soul shtick down to a T, but by failing to deviate from a well-worn formula, it's often difficult to tell when one song ends and another begins. Even when they do think outside the box, such as on the shoegazing riffs of "Tigers and Sharks," and the quasi-Latin rhythms of closer "The Rumour," they still manage to find time to burst into the prevalent wall of emo noise halfway through, with only the lighters-in-the-air acoustic ballad "Always Attract," (featuring
Josh's sister Elissa on backing vocals), having the courage to stick to its more emotive guns. With their constant touring presence and boy band good looks,
Take Off Your Colours will undoubtedly find an audience, but it's an unadventurous debut which is only remarkable for how unremarkable it is. ~ Jon O'Brien