I recently received an invite to go and see You Me At Six perform at Solent Hall in Bournemouth on 11th April for their tour, Night People – By Abbie Webster. At first I was a little apprehensive as I had never listened to any of their songs before let alone been to a rock concert but I thought, ‘what else am I going to do on a Tuesday night?’ so I went. I can honestly say it was probably one of the best gigs I’ve been to in a long time. Where to begin? In preparation for the concert I downloaded all of You Me At Six’s albums to get familiar with their style and songs. Within the first 10 minutes I already had a few favourites which I was hoping they would perform.
When I arrived there were two supporting acts, Black Foxxes and Tonight Alive who were both really good however you could tell the crowd were really pumped for You Me At Six. As soon as they came on stage the atmosphere in the room completely changed, it was insane. They started with a song from their new album which is also the title of it and their tour, Night People. They then went on to play Underdog, one of my favourites and apparently the crowd’s as everyone started to jump and go a bit crazy. It was during this song I realised this was going to be one hell of a show.
Between songs lead singer, Josh Franceschi, was really good at interacting with the crowd which was quite refreshing as you don’t always get this at a gig. They then went on to play Loverboy and Stay With Me, another one of my favourites. I can honestly say that Stay With Me was probably one of the best songs played throughout the whole night. Franceschi’s vocals were absolutely outstanding and the music just gave you chills. The lighting set throughout the song was also on point, right in line with the music.
The Swarm then followed along with Spell It Out and Bite My Tongue minus Ollie Sykes (which I can say I was quite happy about as I am really not a fan of the whole Slipknot thing)! As fascinating as it is when someone can change their voice into the sound of a daemon it just freaks me out?! Anyway back to You Me At Six. I didn’t really know any of the songs that followed however the music was so good I still found myself jumping along with the crowd. Franceschi then announced they were moving onto an all time favourite, Reckless. I was looking forward to this as it is one of my favourites out of all of the albums however as much as I hate to say it I was a little bit disappointed with the performance of this one. I completely appreciate that it is extremely difficult to keep your vocals top notch when you’re performing so many songs one after the other, but it was as if the music was too loud that you couldn’t hear the vocals. This was very disappointing although the crowd did help out and sing along which was great.
Now the next song, Save It For The Bedroom, was very interesting. Franceschi wanted to know where all the crowd surfers were. This instantly made me nervous as I know for a fact I am not strong enough to hold anyone up but luckily I was positioned near the side of the crowd. Throughout this song there were loads of people jumping from the back of the crowd and being carried all the way to the front. This was pretty amazing and is something I hadn’t seen at a gig before however I was just so happy I was not in the middle of the crowd as I witnessed a lot of people get booted in the head.
Before the last song of the night was performed Franceschi decided to do a little bit of a speech. Now although I didn’t know much about You Me At Six before the gig, I knew that they were an English band so it was certainly surprising to hear Franceschi go on about Donald Trump being elected President of the USA. The speech then took the ‘racism is wrong’ angle which I 100% agree with however why does this need to be brought up at a gig? We all agree racism is wrong but we’re here to listen to music not about the problems of the world. The band then proceeded to perform Take On The World as their finishing song which did seem to fit into the motivational speech that was forcefully spoon-fed to us beforehand. Take On The World is another one of my favourite songs however the vocals again weren’t 100% on point. When the song was over the crowd continued singing for an encore in which the band came back on.
The final 3 songs of the night were by far the best, Lived A Lie, Give and Room To Breathe. The atmosphere in the room was electric which seemed to have an effect on Josh Franceschi as his vocals were suddenly spotless. Everyone was bouncing and going mental, it was great and a massive step up after Take On The World. The atmosphere throughout the whole night certainly made it which really brought on the band. I can honestly say I will definitely be going to see You Me At Six again.