'We could be anything, we could be what you like' sing You Me At Six on their new album Sinners Never Sleep, and using the record as a confident step-up from their mainstream breakthrough Hold Me Down, they make a good shot at it too.
For this is an album of many things, a far more mature, astute affair than its predecessor. And while it lacks the instant thrills of Liquid Confidence and Underdog, it more than makes up for it in its overall consistency.
Bass-heavy lead-in track Loverboy is an obvious first single - making for an agile introduction to the record, presenting a streamlined version of the band's sound whilst still packing all the trademark crunchy guitar riffs.
All across Sinners Never Sleep, there's a sense that the band is easy to please its audience, switching between two clearly defined formulas:
1) An evolution of the weighty, barbed-wire rockers that defined the previous album. This reaches its climax on Bite My Tongue - anguished screams and cries of 'hate every part of you' encompass a kind of complete, total, overwhelming passion of the emotions.
2) Something altogether newer for the band - big Americana-tinted FM rock. Here, the emotions are tuned to a more mature, considered level - just as the band and their audience have grown older, so too have the songs: This Is The First Thing is a refreshing variation from the frantic pace the album kicks off with.
By alternating between these two camps, You Me At Six ensure the album never feels tired. Indeed, Little Death's rallying boast of 'Fuck what you believe in!' betrays the band's desire to pursue new styles, to branch out into new areas, something made plain on pre-album single Rescue Me with its guest rap.
The American-styled material could easily have been cheesy, but instead the band really make it work; Little Bit Of Truth is sublime, a track fit to soundtrack a Hollywood action epic - it packs the album's best guitar solo, an immense swaggering thing of cinematic scale.
Placed next to the album's biggest all-out rocker, Time Is Money, the latter half of the record stands up just as well as its opening. Here, the guitar positively slams out of the speakers over a bed of animalistic growls. It's powerful, rousing stuff.
And if that wasn't enough, the band play yet another card from their hand in Crash. It's this song, more than any other on the album that spells out producer Garth Richardson's influence on the record - his previous work includes Biffy Clyro, and Crash is pure Biffy (...and dare I say it, perhaps even a little Snow Patrol...)
Bursting with those twinkly little music-box sounds that so many bands have latched onto of late, Crash is every bit the lush, winter ballad to rival Many of Horror. Sentimentality is the name of the game here, it's all 'I wrap my arms around you now' and... sorry, I think I've got some dust in my eye...
It's funny, you know, that the song that sounds least like You Me At Six ends up being one of the album's greatest moments. That's no bad thing though; the band's willingness to explore new sounds and directions on this album is what makes it - perhaps even more impressive is the ease at which they take to the variation. The songs fit the group like a glove, and it shows in the maturity and confidence that shines off every edge of this package.
Three albums in, and the band have delivered a pure winner.
Sinners Never Sleep is released on the 3rd October and can be pre-ordered here.
