YOU AM I – YOU AM I

Let’s just get the facts out of the way. Album number nine. Self-titled. Iconic Australian band. Almost two decades together. Back on an independent label – Other Tongues. Those facts make statements on their own, statements that in Tim Roger’s own opening words: “We now hold these truths to be evident”. So let’s move on, the band certainly have. You Am I 2010, the band and the album, pull no punches. Live they have always rocked, sometimes they rocked themselves (figuratively speaking), but always they rocked the audience (literally speaking). In the studio they have managed to both captured this side of the band, along with harnessing the nuanced pop writing that Tim Rogers has always exhibited from the classic Hi Fi Way onwards. This time around the clever addition of Megan Washington and Lanie Lane as occasional backing vocalists is a small but significant masterstroke. Playing off Rogers subtle machismo with a soulful ease Lane helps makes Trigger Finger arguably their best single this millennium. While the brilliant (ARIA winning) Washington’s addition on Lie and Face the Sun should help bring younger fans to what is a simple yet perfect bright and breezy summer song. There are more highlights aplenty too; the single Schuck, the crunching The Ocean and two minutes and fourteen seconds of guitar pop brilliance that is Pinpricks. You Am I is a band at their dizzying peak; enjoy the view.

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