Josh Franceschi isn’t here to reinvent the wheel—just maybe put the old tires back on it. “We wanted to make a fan-driven record,” the You Me At Six frontman says of Truth Decay, the band’s latest. “What would your favorite You Me At Six record sound like? We just kind of went for that.” Translation: the band looked back at their prime-era DNA, pumped it full of modern studio polish, and decided nostalgia isn’t just for the crowd—it’s a marketing strategy with guitars.
They’d already flexed their “we can do anything” muscles on the more electronic Sucker Punch, but that came with a cost. “We maybe lost a little bit of what we thought we were really good at,” Franceschi admits. So this time, the mission was clear from day one. “It was probably the first time in half a dozen years where we knew exactly the record we wanted to make before we even made it,” he says. “God Bless the 90s Kids” became the poster child for the album, a three-minute burst of pop-punk sentimentality that all but arrives wearing Vans.
Franceschi’s aware of the current emo/pop-punk renaissance—big bands back in the headlines, new ones waving the flag—and he’s fine riding that wave. “It’s even more perfect timing for our band to be making a record that’s in touch with our roots,” he says. But he also knows the scene’s survived because it’s a memory machine. “In my 30s, when I listen to that kind of music, it reserves a lot of great memories,” he says. “I think that effect doesn’t go away.”
The record isn’t all sugar-coated throwbacks. “Mixed Emotions” digs into the band’s internal wiring, or lack thereof. “If you ask any group of men how they’d rate their communication over many years, they’d probably give it a zero,” Franceschi says, not even pretending to soften the blow. The song pushes back at toxic masculinity, chronic avoidance, and the fact that growing up together in public is basically a group therapy session with merch. “We measure success by how close we are, how long we’ve been going, and whether we’ve got through tough shit together,” he says. “And yeah, there are times I want to throw them down the stairs.”
Despite the occasional homicide fantasy, the band still moves as a unit—literally. “It’s very rare that there’ll be a night out or a day off that we won’t all be together,” Franceschi says. Longevity, in their case, has less to do with luck than with stubbornly treating each other like family.
And then there’s “Take On The World,” which found a second life soundtracking the Vampire Diaries finale. “I’ve never watched the show from start to finish,” he shrugs, though he knows it’s a big deal for fans. He almost didn’t show it to the band at all, instead trying to pitch it to Ed Sheeran and Calvin Harris. “Once we’d ruled those out, I played it to the lads and they were like, ‘I can’t believe you’ve been sitting on this for six months.’” Now it’s permanently tied to a montage of supernatural heartbreak in CW history.
For Franceschi, the combination of fan-service, honest self-dissection, and a little bit of lucky TV placement is exactly where You Me At Six should be. “We’ve been progressive, but this still felt like a step forward,” he says. “It’s the spirit and the DNA of those early records, just reimagined now.” And if it takes a trip down memory lane to get there, well—God bless the ’90s kids.
Watch the interview above and then check out the video below.
