Live Review: You Am I

Sometimes supports are superfluous to requirements, and tonight is one occasion where the crowd needs no warming up whatsoever. You Am I are playing two of their early classic albums in full tonight, but even though no surprises are anticipated we get an early curveball when they break with chronology and begin with 1996 third album Hourly, Daily (which makes complete sense in context). Eternally-debonair frontman Tim Rogers starts acoustically with the gorgeous title track – abetted by a cellist and new Drone Steve Hesketh on keys – before they move onto the effervescent Good Mornin', the crowd then getting involved with the singalong chorus of Mr Milk, before a trumpet and saxophone join the fray for Soldiers. This eight-piece version of You Am I looks imposing but sounds majestic, the projected footage of suburbia behind them adding poignancy as they move through a swag of great tunes such as Tuesday, Wally Raffles and Dead Letter Chorus, before the irrepressible Baby Clothes lifts things a notch – sounding fucking righteous with keys and horns – and they offer a gorgeous version of Please Don't Ask Me To Smile, the acoustic guitars of Rogers and Davey Lane meshing beautifully with the cello. They complete the album proper with a beautifully restrained Who Takes Who Home?, bassist Andy Kent dominating on handclaps, before they throw in the album's (great) hidden track Forget It Sister for completists and take a well-deserved break.

There's a far more laidback vibe to the second half from a sartorial perspective, 1995's Hi Fi Way kicking off with the wonderfully cruisy Ain't Gone And Open, before moving through an amazing rendition of Minor Byrd and a goosebump-inducing She Digs Her. The power trio version of this great band – Rogers, Kent and dynamo drummer Rusty Hopkinson – takes us for a jaunt down memory lane as they ease into the refined power of Cathy's Clown, before thundering into an absolutely blistering version of the scintillating Jewels And Bullets, Lane joining in halfway through to somehow add even more grunt to this riff-tastic song. By now the projections have changed from suburban whimsy to fire and brimstone and the music has morphed accordingly, although there's respite in the beautiful Purple Sneakers, and a local shout-out when they update the reference to seeing “a Massappeal show” to seeing “a Screamfeeder show” in Pizza Guy. Rocking versions of The Applecross Wing Commander and Stray lead into a Rogers solo take on Handwasher, before Punkarella and the amazingly poignant Gray steer us to the finish line, the band completing proceedings with an epic reading of How Much Is Enough.

Of course with this many You Am I acolytes baying for more they were always going to comply, the band returning for run throughs of Opportunities and the evergreen Trike before Rogers gets his soul on for a cover of Mose Allison's Young Man Blues, and they finish with a raucous rendition of early track Copralalia. Few bands master either power or refinement, let alone both, and tonight shows exactly why You Am I will go down in history as one of Australia's finest ever guitar groups.