You Me at Six’s fourth studio album, Cavalier Youth, is the next progression in the band’s effort to cement themselves as a rock band but does not seek to shirk their pop-punk breeding completely.
It kicks off with ‘Too Young to Feel this Old’ and the opening lyric ‘we’re not young anymore / what are you so scared of?’ introduces one of the potential themes of the album – a negotiation with youth and age and maturity. The band cling to that sense of carefree youth which has characterized them up to now and manifests itself in the emphatic drums and catapulting chorus which rings with an optimistic fervor. It’s a perfect opening track for the album and the antithesis of the darkness of previous album Sinners Never Sleep.
‘Lived a Lie’ was the band’s first single to flirt with number one and bridges the gap between old and new sound very well. The chorus ups the song’s decibel rating like the songs of old. It muses on those the band had worked with in the past who didn’t believe that they’d make it to playing arenas like Wembley (‘Well somebody told me / that I would be a dreamer for life / somebody told me I would never reach the other side’). Whether they feel they have blagged it or not, they defiantly claim it all: ‘And if I lived a lie / would someone meet me on the other side / so I can up bright… so live a lie just tonight’. The song becomes very self-consciously anthemic, even lapsing into a slightly clichéd repeated refrain of ‘we are believers, we are believers’ towards the end. Nevertheless the production is far more accomplished than some of their earlier work and amps this up into the stadium-worthy hit they’ve been searching for.
On ‘Fresh Start Fever’ the band’s makes a bold statement, that they mean to build towards long term goals and not simply achieve brief commercial success. In interviews they have drawn attention to a difference in the drums for this record and the attention given to rhythm certainly shines through throughout. Rather than acting as a background regulator the drums loudly stake their claim for centre stage and mesh with the melody to perfection, while still asserting a unique character of their own. ‘Room to Breathe’ is perhaps closest to their heavier rock sound and evokes a powerful claustrophobia and need for release. ‘Win Some, Lose Some’ and ‘Cold Night’, an unoriginal and sickly sentimental ode to young love, are perhaps two of the weaker tracks on the album – the former if only for the cringe-inducing lyric: ‘in a different district… Hunger Games’. ‘Carpe Diem’ magnificently embodies the whole spirit of cavalier youth, conjuring images of sunshine and coast-lines, and would be one of my favourites if I didn’t keep picturing fish when they sing ‘CARP diem’. They save the best till last with ‘Wild Ones’ which largely continues the sentiment but with a stirring melody which builds gradually throughout the song. The lyrics and melody do become extremely reminiscent of the classic ‘Forever Young’ (‘are we gonna live forever?… no’) but it somehow seems apt.
Cavalier Youth is an uplifting and exuberant album, full of life, which ends on a note of self-realization. It begins and ends strongly but perhaps does lapse in the middle with some forgettable offerings. The album artwork is a strong image of sunshine and youth which embodies the record perfectly. The sound is more polished and mature and another rung on the ladder towards pure rock status. Recruiting Neal Avron (Fall Out Boy, Yellowcard) on production duties was inspired as he helps to engineer an album which is progress but not departure with something for original fans and newcomers. In Cavalier Youth, You Me at Six have made an album which will make you look to the future with hope.