Sinners Never Sleep

iTunes Review

With a bit of swagger in its step, You Me at Six makes the shift from teen pop-punk combo to grown-up rock outfit with the eclectic and consistently engaging Sinners Never Sleep. The group continues to offer the closely meshed harmonies and propulsive melodies that earned it success. What’s added is a more emotionally volatile attitude, hammered home by Garth Richardson’s metal-tipped production. Singer Josh Franceschi vents and rages with real ferocity on tracks like the scathing “Bite My Tongue” (featuring a harsh vocal cameo by Bring Me the Horizon’s Oli Sykes) and the jittery “Time Is Money” (punctuated by the frenzied wails of Parkway Drive’s Winston McCall). The band’s erotic quotient is kicked up several notches on strutting, guitar-prodded tunes like “Loverboy” and “Jaws on the Floor.” The classic rebel moves of “Little Death” stay tuneful even as they shout defiance to the world. Elsewhere, Franceschi and his bandmates reaffirm their more romantic inclinations, pining over thwarted love in “This Is the First Thing” and soaring to string-draped heights in “Crash.”