Night People (You Me at Six album)

Background

You Me at Six released their fourth studio album Cavalier Youth in January 2014. The group supported it with an 18-month long touring cycle, which included the band's first arena tour, and ended with an appearance at the Isle of Wight Festival in June 2015. Following this, the band's social media accounts went inactive. After the preceding ten years of constant touring, the band members went a break, which vocalist Josh Franceschi considered to be "necessary to appreciate the things we had, to get off the ride for a little bit." During the break, the band members refrained from listening to the radio or rock albums, instead consuming hip hop, UK grime, soul and funk music.

In the autumn of 2015, the band built a personal studio at drummer Dan Flint's house, which would allow them to work whenever they wished. The band visited Flint's studio as often as three or four times a week to write new material; the group ended up writing 50–60 new songs. Following demoing sessions in Sheffield with Ross Orton, the vision for the group's next album began to form, as Franceschi explains: "Out of that process we knew that we were necessarily going down the right route—musically, mentally, everything."

Production

The band members reconvened in January 2016 with no immediate plans to record a new album, nor any idea of who might produce it. After having discussions with several different producers, the group were approached by Jacquire King in early February. King offered the band the chance to record in Nashville, Tennessee, and "literally three days later," according to Franceschi, the band boarded a plane to Nashville. The group was so eager to record that they flew before their management had been able to figure out accommodation in the city. In the past, the group had "screaming matches with some of our producers," according to Franceschi; to avoid stressing out King or themselves, the band's management recommended they took a meditation class prior to recording.

Recording for Night People took place at Black Bird Studios with King producing the sessions. The group entered the studio with six to eight songs, and planned to record for three weeks. However, halfway through the sessions, the group went home to write more songs, before returning to Black Bird Studios. King wanted to record a rock album with the band, something he hadn't done since Kings of Leon's Only by the Night in 2008. According to Franceschi, King's "attitude was very much, ‘I can’t have you make a record with me unless it’s your best record, and I want it to be the best rock record I’ve made.’"

King asked the group if they had recorded live-in-the-studio before, to which they replied they hadn't. After attempting it, King was instantly impressed with how well the group worked as a cohesive unit: "I've not seen a band play like that in a long, long fucking time. I can tell you guys know each inside out." The band recorded the majority of the album with this approach. Working in Nashville, the band were "so focused and determined at the same," according to Franceschi. Andrew Scheps mixed the recordings, while Eric Boulanger mastered them.

Composition

All of the songs on the album, apart from "Plus One", "Take on the World" and "Can't Hold Back", were written by the band. "Plus One" and "Can't Hold Back" were written by the band and Longpigs frontman Crispin Hunt, while "Take on the World" was written by the band and Iain Archer. Franceschi wrote all of the songs' lyrics, and attempted to give them "its own character, its own sort of perspective." Discussing the album's title, Franceschi explained: "Most bands have a kinda 4pm to 4am existence, ... so it seemed like an appropriate title for a rock record." The album's sound has been described as pop rock, hard rock, and rock and roll. Rock groups such as Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, the Who, Muse, the Strokes and the Killers have been cited as influencing Night People.

The title-track was one of the first songs the group wrote for the record. "Plus One" was written while Franceschi was playing an acoustic guitar during the group's first recording session at Black Bird Studios. The group worked on it as a full-band song at Flint's home studio. Franceschi described the song's lyrics as being about the "pursuit of someone pursuit you’ve wanted you’ve or a long time." "Heavy Soul" was put together during a rehearsal which Franceschi could not attend due to being ill. Flint sent a demo of the song to Franceschi, who exclaimed "Fucking hell, lads, this is good!" According to Franceschi, the song's lyrics talk about the "heartbreak when you’re no longer in love with the idea of being a musician and what that might mean." According to Franceschi, as soon as the group recorded "Take on the World", "we knew that it was a big anthem."

Franceschi described "Brand New" as the type of song he had been "waiting for us to write for a while." The song's lyrics were partially written on the behalf of people in Franceschi's life and talks about "not letting the past dictate your future." With "Swear", the group wanted a song that was reminiscent of "Loverboy" in the bass and drums, as well as being "more in line with what we are listening to now", according to guitarist Max Helyer. The song initially started out as a verse and then "all of a sudden this song came together in the space of an hour." According to Franceschi, the group wanted the bassline in "Swear" to "almost be offensive, and make people feel like they're being attacked." The song's lyrics are partially "where you’re pursuing someone not necessarily for a confrontation, but for an answer, or an apology, perhaps", according to Franceschi. Franceschi wanted the lyrics to complement the "intensity of the music." Franceschi considered the middle eight of "Make Your Move" to be the "heaviest piece of music" on the album, "almost flirt[ing] with a Limp Bizkit kind of vibe."

While working in Dan's studio, Franceschi tracked a demo of "Can't Hold Back" consisting solely of a guitar riff and a middle eight. The group later altered the structure of the song, according to Franceschi "a hundred times" and almost abandoned it. The lyrics to it were influenced by the Arctic Monkeys' "Fake Tales of San Francisco". Arctic Monkeys frontman Alex Turner has "always been really good in setting scenes with his lyrics, and I was kinda trying to do something similar here", according to Franceschi. With "Spell It Out", Franceschi attempted to write a song that could "almost fit as a sync to a movie trailer or some Game Of Thrones battle scene." While performing at an Australian festival, Franceschi spotted Sticky Fingers, who have "one song that had a slow tempo but was really euphoric," which inspired Franceschi to write "Give".

Release

On 10 August 2016, the band hosted a livestream on their Twitter account. The livestream lasted an hour, revealing the hashtag "#NIGHTPEOPLE" and a logo. This led to speculation of a new album, which was later revealed to be titled Night People. The following day, the band posted an image with the phrase "Raise a glass to tomorrow's blues" over it. On 22 August, Night People was announced for release, and the album's artwork and track listing was revealed. A day later, "Night People" was released as a single. On 8 September, a music video was released for the title-track, directed by Ryan Vernava and Liam Achaibu. "Plus One" was released as a single on 3 October. In October, the band went a tour of the UK with support from VANT. The following month, the band went on a tour of Europe with support from Lower Than Atlantis. "Give" was released as a single on 4 November. "Swear" was released as a single on 23 November. A day later, a music video was released for the song, film during the band's performance at the Shepherd's Bush Empire in London. "Heavy Soul" was released as a single on 21 December.

"Give" was released to US modern rock radio on 4 January 2017. Night People was initially planned for release on 13 January; it was released on 6 January through Infectious Music. The Japanese edition of the album included live versions of "Night People", "Plus One" and "Swear", recorded at Shepherd's Bush Empire, as bonus tracks. On 7 February, a music video was released for "Give", filmed at Shepherd's Bush Empire. On 13 March, it was announced on the band's Facebook page that "Take on the World" would be released as the next single off the album, after already having received 2 million streams on Spotify. The band will go on a tour of the UK in April with support from Tonight Alive and Black Foxxes.

Reception

Night People received mixed reviews from critics. The album charted at number 3 in the UK, number 3 in Scotland, number 20 in Australia and number 84 in Belgium. It also charted at number 1 on the New Zealand Heatseekers Albums chart. Several tracks form the album charted on the UK Rock & Metal Singles Chart: "Night People" at number 10, "Plus One" at number 24, "Give" at number 5 and "Swear" at number 39.

Track listing

All songs written by You Me at Six, except where noted. All lyrics by Josh Franceschi.

Bonus tracks

Personnel

Personnel per booklet.