You Am I - You Am I

As one of the true legends of 1990’s Australian rock, Melbourne’s You Am I have long been one of this country’s favourite bands. With their ninth and self-titled record, You Am I have proven themselves worthy of their placing on Australia’s musical pedestal.

Listen while you read:

Please download Flash to view this audio player.

Please download Flash to view this audio player.

Although they don’t like to talk about it, You Am I are an act that has forged a career forever leaving them whispered in the breath of anyone speaking definitively about Australian music. They’re a band who has consistently been at the forefront of Australian rock n roll; maybe not innovating or creating the sound, but most definitely defining it. After all, aren’t You Am I the Australian Rolling Stones of the 1990’s, with Tim Rogers the suburban Sydney equivalent to Mick Jagger?

Powerful, consistent, driven and laconic, their legacy is one that continues to inspire our local rock acts, setting the soundtrack to fifteen years of Sunday afternoon BBQ’s. On their latest record, the appropriately self-titled addition to their sprawling catalogue, the blue singlets and wry grins have been supplanted by a steely gaze and an overcoat bracing itself against the chilly Melbourne air. It trades the summer anthems of 'Berlin Chair' and 'Purple Sneakers' for something much more measured and introspective; and the result is another worthy place sitter in the You Am I discography. 

You Am I is the sort of album you’d expect from a band of their experience; it’s mature and heartfelt where it would have been puerile in the past. Rogers’ knack for a lyric has shown no sign of aging and the band continues to put together the signature sound of You Am I with a degree of restraint that bleeds every last piece of worth out of those aforementioned words. From the building opener We Hardly Knew You to the gorgeous album closer Let’s Not Get Famous (with the apt lyric: ‘the best laid plans of mice and men were noble before the crowd walked in’), You Am I are absolutely on fire.  Indeed, it helps when they bring in the voices of the incredibly in-demand Megan Washington and the impossible Lanie Lane to stoke the coals. Where the angelically voiced Washington casts an air of romanticism over Shuck and Lie and Face the Sun, Lanie Lane sends chills down the spine with her sauced vocal on the strutting Trigger Finger. Meanwhile, where they’re absent, the band is pulling out belter’s like The Good Ones and the sprawling Waiting to be Found Out, cramming as much pure rock goodness as you could manage in forty minutes.

This is not You Am I’s most emotional album, nor their most balls out rocker, but it is You Am I at their best. Mixing their opposing abilities to write a brawler and a bawler - in not too dissimilar a fashion to the Stones’ polar opposites of Brown Sugar and Moonlight Mile on 'Sticky Fingers' - and sometimes within the very same track, they’ve hit a formula that leaves this album with very few flaws. Sure, the album does lose its focus a bit with the disproportionate Pinpricks and The Ocean wedged into the album’s centre, but nitpicking aside, they’ve crafted a cohesive eleven to superb consequence. It’s not going to shake Hi-Fi Way or Hourly, Daily as their greatest, but it certainly takes a comfortable placing in their top five - maybe even putting in a brave fight for third - and for a band with a discography of the quality of You Am I’s, that’s one hell of a feat. 

You Am I by You Am I is out on October 8th on Other Tongues.