More than five years since their last studio album, You Am I are back with a new single, titled 'The Waterboy', that's going to be an instant classic.
With Tim Rogers commanding the microphone, it's the first salvo from the Australian group's forthcoming 11th studio album and finds the group in fine form.A song that explores the group's own ability to reconnect creatively and forge forward with new material, Rogers was first inspired by a Waterboy' track.
"On the Waterboys album 'Modern Blues' I found a Mike Scott song called 'I Can See Elvis'. It just killed me, I couldn't stop listening to it," Tim says.
"Mike is a big-hearted person, he really puts it all out there and I like that. I was on the New South Wales south coast listening to a Scottish guy living in Ireland singing about Elvis and that led to the four places line."
With the band separated by the pandemic and border closures (Rogers and guitarist Davey Lane in Melbourne; bassist Andy Kent and drummer Russell Hopkinson in Sydney), Rogers and Lane recorded a demo of 'The Waterboy' and sent it to Sydney.
When Andy and Russell sent back what they had recorded, Tim says he was surprised by what he heard, but in a good way. "What they did was very different to what I had imagined for the song and made it so much better," Rogers says.
"'The Waterboy' began as a folk tune set to fingerpicking but when peak 'pining' for our band hit I imagined being in a room together and changed the whole feel of the toon.
"Typically, what Russ, Davey and AK came back with eviscerated all my daydreamin's and replaced them with jumpin' round the room enthusiasms."
Now You Am I have confirmed their Sydney show at the recently re-opened Enmore Theatre is going ahead on 15 April – and the lads are enthusiastically spirited about the comeback to live performance.
"The Enmore Theatre stage holds some very special memories for us as a band," Andy says.
"So to be able to put 2020 well behind us all and step back out there to share a night of loud rock and roll with our strong, faithful and beautiful audience is something we are very much looking forward to. GBTFLoU!"
For You Am I loyalists hooked on the news of another album from the four-piece, it's slated to arrive later in the year. "There is a reason why this band has been together for a long time and it's not just because we are really good friends," Russell says.
"We're resilient to the things that go on outside the band, for better or worse.
"There was an idea that we would be able to be together at some point to finish the record. Fate had a way of making sure that didn't happen. Yet we've made an album since the last time we were all together in a room, made the best of the situation to create this piece of art.
"It has been a cathartic experience, which is what we all needed after a year when those have been few and far between if you are a touring musician."
You Am I play Enmore Theatre (Sydney) 15 April.
