“The most important thing for us is longevity,” says drummer Dan Flint. “We want to do this for as long as we can. It’s not about having a monster hit album all over the world and everyone’s singing your song, but then the next year, no one cares about you. That’s our worst nightmare.”
The band’s longstanding commitment to gradually building their following is now paying tremendous dividends. Upon its release in January last year, You Me At Six’s fourth LP Cavalier Youth reached #1 in the UK charts. “We had an inkling in the UK that Cavalier Youth might be quite successful,” says Flint, “but the fact that we got to number one was absolutely crazy.”
Getting to the top of the album charts is an epochal achievement for any musician, but it’s not the realisation of an end-goal. Just as it wouldn’t have made sense for the Potter-series to get cut short once Rowling became a best-selling author, You Me At Six still have plenty to offer.
“Cavalier Youth has led us into another great set-up for another album,” Flint says. “We’ll be able to leave this on a high and come back in the future with some new music. That’s what we always aim to do – leave it on a high, gradually take a couple more steps up in terms of world domination and try again with another album.”
On the subject of world domination, now they’ve got a UK Number One under their belts, You Me At Six are gaining broader exposure in markets beyond their homeland. “All the previous albums have been successful in their own right as well, they were perfect for what they were, but having that Number One album kick-started everything else across the rest of the world for us.”
In actual fact, You Me At Six have had the attention of Australian listeners for several years now, which led to not one, but two Australian visits in 2014. Such is the fervour of the band’s Aussie fanbase that You Me At Six will be back later in the month. It’s been 15 months since Cavalier Youth came out and even Flint’s impressed by the record’s lingering impact.
“If there’s demand somewhere, we’ll keep going back, and if there’s not, then we won’t do it,” he says. “We’d set up the album quite well, but it was more about riding that wave and seeing how long we could make the album cycle last.”
While You Me At Six have been frequent Australian tourists over the past five years, the forthcoming tour marks the first time they’ll venture beyond the capital cities.
“We’re thinking to ourselves, ‘Awesome, let’s go see a part of Australia that we’ve never seen before’.” Flint says. “We’ll have quite a few days off as well, so we’ll really get to explore the country. Me and my sister were looking the other day at all the places we’re heading to on the festival and we were thinking, ‘Christ.’ I don’t even know how we’re going to get to these places and there’s going to be a hell of a lot of travelling around. But we’re excited we get to do something different and see a few new faces.”
BY AUGUSTUS WELBY
