You Am I: The Sixth Sense.

You Am I

Deliverance is in stores on September 30.

“It’s really an adolescent fantasy world that we live in, muses You Am I frontman Tim Rogers. “One where every record or tour is really romantic proposition.”

Six albums into their career, it’s heartening to know You Am I are still a vital and engaging force in Australian music. From the outset, You Am I have exuded an honesty and sense of raw passion in their music that has endeared them to the hearts, and certainly the ears of audiences both here in Australia and overseas. This enthusiasm is on display with their new album Deliverance, turned around in a matter of months, and brimming with all the elements that make the band a musical tour de force. And no, there’s no banjo.

“The name Deliverance is quite iconic and attached to the book and the film, I realise that,” Tim explains. “The last few years with the band have been a really good time, and I guess we felt like we’d been delivered from evil so to speak. We’ve had a great burst of energy and freedom. I guess it’s a term used biblically as an escape from the clutches of darkness. We’ve chosen not to worry about it being such an iconic term and remembered for that scene in a great film. We just went for it. We’ve got a lot of blood surging through our veins, and that term sort of summed up the album for us. I like the fact that things are dependent on us, it keeps us on our toes.”

At this point, one could be forgiven for being of the mistaken impression the band were not to happy with their recent past, and perhaps not entirely satisfied with their Dress Me Slowly long player of last year. While the production of the record was undoubtedly laboured, spanning three years, several studios and some big name American producers, this is not the case. As Tim is willing to point out.

“It was just things that rock bands go through. I think we’d just presented ourselves as being up for anything and willing to do anything for a drink or a show, and I think it wasted a lot of time. We’re certainly not bitter about anything at all. Passion was never an issue. It was more just a realisation of what we wanted rather than spending a lot of time doing not a lot overseas. We’ve just taken control ourselves. We just got the people we wanted and worked at what was going to serve the song. We thing the strengths of the band lay elsewhere, rather than in just writing a hit single. We want to make good records and play good shows, and it gave us a better sense of what we are anyway.”

But that’s not to say Deliverance is not without it’s share of classic You Am I tunesmithery. The band’s discography is littered with tracks that artists would crawl across broken glass to be able to pen. From the seminal Berlin Chair to more recent highlights like Kick A Hole In The Sky or Get Up, Tim Rogers has a knack for a perfectly crafted pop tune. From the opening bars of Words For Sadness, Deliverance, umm, delivers.

“I guess not having a grand vision really helps,” he quips. “I think we’re just more about reaching the heights we had last night, you know, if you do a good show or have a good day in the studio, we just want to capture that again. It’s really addictive, because you do anything to get back to that state. It’s more about how can we make today better as a band, or trying to band out a couple of tunes in a week. It’s possible to get very ambitious, especially with rock bands being all about dynamics and who can be the biggest the quickest, and I think you can loose sight of the fact that it is supposed to be enjoyable.”

“We kind of stopped playing 200 shows a year, and I actually got to see some bands again, and rediscover what it was that I really liked about rock bands. It was quite cathartic.”