There are times when you can distinctly remember hearing a band for the first time, whereas other bands seep into your consciousness, nestling in a part of your brain as if they’ve been there forever. When did you, or I, first hear Devo, Radiohead or The Clash? I certainly can’t remember when I did. But I know that I first heard You Am I in 1996. I was preparing for a school camp whilst listening to Triple J and heard You Am I’s “new track” Mr. Milk. Instantly I was hooked. Growing up in a home with parents fixated with ‘60s/’70s pop, the song retained a British pop sensibility, while Tim Rogers had such an unashamedly Australian voice. There were “woo-hoo”s and “la-la-la”s. It was everything I had been brought up to believe was good about music, within the one track. The song was in my head all night, and all week. As soon as I got home, I went out and bought the band’s new album Hourly, Daily. The store assistant told me it was “real good.”

Instantly the album grabbed me, initially through Rogers’ captivating voice. The songs were all classically structured – riffs, guitar solos, catchy choruses. Good Mornin’ was stuck in my head for about six months. Wally Raffles, another Triple J favourite, combined Rogers’ “hep, hep” with machine-gun precision drumming from Russell Hopkinson.

Rogers’ position as a “suburban poet” has been well-documented in the past (the line “I’m like a waterlogged ball that no-one wants to kick around anymore” from Heavy Heart has stayed with me since I first heard it), but his poetic license has never been used so well as throughout the tracks on Hourly, Daily. The lyrics cut to the core of “Australiana” without resorting to tired cliches. Rogers’ songs detail the minutiae, the essence, of suburban life. Most of you know Purple Sneakers’ opening couplet of “had a scratch only you could itch / underneath the Glebe Point Bridge”, but Hourly, Daily is just as striking in its encapsulation of Rogers’ world. The brass-backed Tuesday features

“As the morning bread goes hard
On the corner shop they’re waiting
Just for rush hour to start
And I’m wondering why his kids are late
I really should just get out more these days.”

On Someone Else’s Home he asks

“I’ve checked all the dailies
and subscription mail-ins
but where do we come from?“

One of the finest tracks on the album, Heavy Comfort, features an acoustic tempered by lush strings, over which Rogers croons “for forty seconds today / I was sure we were feeling the same way…”

In Please Don’t Ask Me To Smile, one of my personal favourite You Am I songs of all-time, Rogers justifies the song’s title with

“And you said show us them teeth
Give us them braces
Show us the dental work that puts fear in twelve year old faces.”

Of course, to focus solely on Rogers’ lyrics would be detracting from You Am I’s music, and I’m sure that I would get nasty e-mails from You Am I fans telling me to get over the fact that Tim is an extremely talented lyricist and that I should be paying more attention to Andy Kent and Rusty Hopkinson (Hourly, Daily was pre-Davey Lane days). And they’re right.

Speaking from a purely musical perspective, Hourly, Daily is one of the most accessible You Am I albums. Whilst most tracks lack the raw grunt which made earlier songs like Sound As Ever’s Coprolalia classics, the break away from strict rock and experimentation with brass (Tuesday, Baby Clothes – with the album’s brass and string sections being collaborated by Sydney luminary Jackie Orzasky, who has also worked with Machine Gun Fellatio), lush string arrangements (title track and album opener Hourly, Daily, Heavy Comfort) and the sort of acoustica which would feature in Rogers’ later work with The Twin Set/Temperance Union (Please Don’t Ask Me To Smile) fleshed out the band’s sound, and let to a formidable live show, as videos from the era would document.
 
The singles – amongst them Good Mornin’, Soldiers and Mr. Milk – which all earned spots on the band’s 2003 best-of The Cream And The Crock – as the rest of the album, all sound fresh and energetic almost ten years on. Mr. Milk, the track which drew me to the band all those years ago, has a riff reminiscent of XTC over which Rogers tells his tale of a milkman and his girl – “I’m sure she would love me sweeter / if we made it to the pier for dinner.” Good Mornin’ and Soldiers are both all jangly riffs and perfect hooks, and amongst a handful of singles which could be considered to be You Am I’s finest (throw in the obligatory Berlin Chair, and Heavy Heart, and Get Up and.. well, the list goes on).

The production is rich. The first album You Am I had recorded in Australia, the time cooped up in Sydney’s Q Studios with the esteemed Wayne Connolly and Paul McKercher more than paid off. The mix from David Bianco (he who worked with Teenage Fanclub) allows Rogers’ voice to dominate the softer songs, but forces it to take a back seat during the bulkier tracks such as Baby Clothes and Wally Raffles. You’d be hard pressed to find a better produced album than Hourly, Daily – pure perfection.

There was a reason why You Am I headlined seven shows in six days at Sydney’s Metro Theatre in support of Hourly, Daily (most of them supported by Powderfinger, no less). Hourly, Daily also debuted at #1 on the national ARIA charts, and nabbed the group six ARIA Awards including Best Australian Group and Best Australian Album. Maybe these just sound like meaningless statistics, but they’re not – what they represent is one of the finest Australian albums of the past decade. You’ve surely heard this album somewhere – if you don’t own it, one of your friends would, or you would have heard it in a record shop, or a café, or in between bands at your local venue. And if you’ve never heard it, what are you doing reading articles on a computer screen? Go and buy it. Really.