You Me At Six - The Astoria, London 27/10/08

  

I was quite surprised to see how absolutely packed the place was from such an early time, "wow"; I thought "I can't believe so many people have come here just waiting for you me at six! They really must be something special live". But then it dawned on me, most of these kids were in a completely different decade to me and really had nothing else to do before the gig, it's not like they could nip into pub for a few drinks first or anything. This was their night, in its entirety. It bought me back to the days when I used to be grossly underage and used to queue up for gigs for hours before they started, hoping to secure a place right near the front, making the before gig antics almost more fun then the actual show itself. Ahhh. I'm glad I'm a grown up now.

So the nervous energy builds and these 15 year olds can barely contain themselves, when finally the theme tune to the exorcist starts, and on come you me at six opening with the song "The truth is a terrible thing", to what can seriously be likened to Beatle mania applause. Next up is current single "Jealous minds think alike" and then a question to the crowd "London, did you bring your voices??!" followed promptly by the poppy anthem and one of my favourites, "Gossip", where we all joined in with the “woah ohs”.

If I was judging by the reception from the audience alone, I would say YMAS were as big Led Zeppelin, and stalwart pioneers of the stage. Unfortunately, however, I'm not. Despite evidently being able to harness the power of getting the crowd going manic, what stood in front on me were five very average looking boys, almost on the geeky side. A far cry from the polished styled pics of their MySpace and other similar press representing a scene image. But ok, I can get over that, maybe they're about the music (hang on, isn't this whole scene of pop-punk about everything BUT the music?); but now listening to them live, they weren't sounding too great either. Josh's vocals weren't loud enough, they sounded nothing like their recorded music, there were loud and quiet random bits where he seemed not to be able to control his voice and breathing. I would usually blame the sound person for making his mic too low, the music too loud, but apparently they had sound checked for about 4 hours. Oh dear.



So Josh isn't that great at singing live, I had an inkling at this as his recorded vocals don't seem to come naturally, but this aside the band did command the stage tremendously well, and you could really feel the passion from them as a whole, as one unit, deeply in love with what they do. So I soon got over the dodgy sound, and everyone knows all the words anyway so it doesn't really matter and I got into the spirit of things.

Next came the scolding "You've made you're bed", and I have to reiterate how so very the enthusiastic this crowd are. After some mention of how chuffed the band are to be playing to 2000 people in their hometown, they move into "Nasty habits", "Call that a comeback" and then the true high light of the evening for me, "Save it for the bedroom", which I have to admit I thought was absolutely amazing in both respects of the crowd and the bands performance. You could really see the intense energy between band and crowd and it was slightly awe inspiring.

Not long after a nervous Emilia Francheschi, sister of Josh, enters the stage and is introduced for "Always Attract". Arm in arm the two duet together and it is quite a touching brother sister moment, very sweet. It’s at this point where I realised that the vocal sound problem was most likely more Josh then just poor sound, as his sisters vocals were fine and she was distinctly the stronger singer. Oh!



"If I were in your shoes" soon makes an appearance, and then finally closing with "The rumour", where support acts Houston Calls and Farewell all join the stage and Josh tells us to "hold your hands in the air!", which of course the crowd don't need to be told twice to do. A truly enjoyable set, and despite a few flaws I still have to give these boys a lot of credit.

It's the passion and unpretentious honesty of a band barely believing their own luck and making the most of it that will no doubt make those last words "This is a great venue and great shows have happened here; so don't ever fucking forget the London Astoria!." very true for many of the fans tonight. It really was another great show at the Astoria.

Photography by Charlotte Hoole - (Flickr: farleys_rusk's Photostream)