Album Review: You Me At Six, SUCKAPUNCH

They may no longer be the emo-pop wunderkinds they once were, but as You Me At Six’s new album attests, 30-year-olds get angsty too. That’s not to say that SUCKAPUNCH finds the Surrey band reverting to old tricks – rather, their descent into themes of darkness, hardship and eventual redemption coincides with the arrival of their most expansive, genre-defying sound to date.

As the album title quite literally spells out, SUCKAPUNCH is an unexpected move in a hard-hitting new direction, as You Me At Six step boldly into the worlds of electronic, R&B and hip-hop, in an attempt to position themselves at the cutting age of modern rock. Stylistically, they refuse to settle – jumping wildly from the club-ready title track, to the Imagine Dragons-esque ‘Adrenaline’, to the hip-hop-influenced ‘What’s It Like’.

Josh Franceschi and co. are more fired up than we’ve seen them in years, placing raw passion at the centre of their approach, as they face up to the reality of adulthood in their songwriting – a reflection, perhaps, of the fact that most of the band, who formed when they were in their teens, turned 30 while working on the record.

While it may not be ground-breaking enough to win them new legions of fans in 2021, the artistic progression demonstrated on SUCKAPUNCH is a testament to the underlying creativity at the core of You Me At Six – and is sure to resonate with the famously devout fans they’ve grown up alongside, as they enter this new chapter together.