You Me At Six w/ Deaf Havana and Lower Than Atlantis
You Me At Six have seen a meteoric rise to success over the past few years. It doesn’t feel like too long ago that the band were opening for Fightstar on the band’s UK tour (behind The Sleeping and Emanuel), and that’s because it wasn’t really that long ago; only three years have passed since then. Taking a leaf out of Charlie Simpson and co.’s book, the band head out on their biggest UK tour to date with two of the countries most promising rock bands.
First up is Lower Than Atlantis, a band who are currently enjoying the rimming of several BBC Radio 1 DJ’s at the moment. Disappointingly, the venue tonight (Aberdeen’s The Music Hall) decide it would be a good idea to have the first band play 15 minutes before the stated doors opening time on the tickets, which results in this very reviewer (amongst hundreds of other ticket holders) missing the majority of the opening set. They sound pretty tight from outside the venue, which is always a good precursor for when you actually arrive inside the venue and band solider on with their modern blend of radio rock. They churn out a Foo Fighters medley as if they wrote the songs themselves, and wrap things up with the fan favourite ‘(Motor) Way Of Life’, proving that their sound can fill a room of this size with relative ease. (7)
Another band riding the current wave of mainstream British rock bands are Deaf Havana, who also do well to occupy a stage of such scale tonight. They don’t seem phased by the enormous crowd in front of them at all, and when you consider the same band played to a 250+ crowd at the city’s The Tunnels venue less than a year ago, you must concede that it’s an impressive feat. There’s one problem in the whole set, and it’s a problem that some what hampers the enjoyment. The songs, whilst being quite powerful, start to blend together quite quickly and for a half hour set, that’s a worrying trait for your tunes to have. They seem to be enjoying themselves and a fair portion of the crowd seem to be in the swing of things after a few beers, so in more respects than one, you can count this set as a success. The jury is still out though. Only time will tell if Deaf Havana have the staying power to one day be in the shoes of tonight’s headliners. (7)
Kicking off a set with some rather obvious microphone problems, You Me At Six are a tad underwhelming in their arrival, which is unfortunate. It takes them a few songs to get into their stride but all seems to be corrected as they ring out the opening keys to an old school favourite in ‘Save It For The Bedroom’, which works in their favour as from here on in the set just seems to climb from height to height. The British pop punk group arguably struggle to write an album worth of quality music, but over the course of three albums they have produced enough hits to keep a crowd excited with such tracks as fan favourite ‘Liquid Confidence’ and new single ‘Bite My Tongue’, the latter with frontman Josh Franceschi sounding just as visceral as the recordings guest vocalist Olly Sykes. When the band come out for their typical encore, you just know how the evening is going to end. The band quickly batter through ‘Loverboy’ before the opening guitar line of ‘Underdog’ emanates from the speakers to rapturous applause. The next five minutes manage to sum up exactly how You Me At Six got to such a venue in the first place: when they hit the spot, they really hit it hard, and this parting shot to a sold out Music Hall also epitomises why the band will no doubt be gracing this stage, if not bigger stages, for many years to come. They find it hard to leave, and it’s the connection between band and fan which makes this final five minutes quite a spectacle. They may not be the most prolific band when it comes to sustaining quality on record, but you simply can’t fault them as a live band. In a word; sublime. (8)
