Brilliant, Awkward, And Inconsistent: You Am I’s ‘The Lives Of Others’ Ultimately Falls Short

If there’s one thing we’ve learned over the last 30-odd years of You Am I, it’s that there’s always a greater story at play.

This year, for instance, will mark the silver jubilee of the band’s tried-and-true masterpiece, Hourly, Daily. On surface value, the album served as yet another impeccable collection of Aussie rock that expanded the band’s sonic horizons just enough to substantiate growth and creative development.

What’s more often discussed about the album, however — and rightly so — is its subtle conceptual nature, taking listeners through an entire day in the life of Sydney suburbia. The tales told across each track are different, yes, but as a whole, they paint a picture that mirrors the life and times of the city at large. The more you invest, the more the story unravels.

Of course, a lot has changed since You Am I’s halcyon days. After all, it’s been quite some time since there was a weight of importance on new material from the band. If pressed, you could probably draw the line circa their now-infamous ousting from BMG (and, of course, the Mark Holden airport fisticuffs that ensued). Upon finding their feet following some mid-2000s lows, the band ultimately made the transition from triple j darlings to Double J darlings — quite literally, as frontman Tim Rogers became a regular host on the station.

For a time, they also shifted their focus to reissues and classic-album playthroughs. New studio albums came and went, but they ultimately felt — more often than not, at least — like excuses to tour than start-to-finish investments in the same way Hourly, Daily or Hi-Fi Way were. Put it this way: No one is walking out after the final notes of ‘Berlin Chair’ have rung out complaining to their mate about how they didn’t play ‘Let’s Not Get Famous’.

Lightning In A Socially Distanced Bottle

It’s easy, then, to approach The Lives of Others — You Am I’s tenth studio effort — as just another album in the band’s ouvre. This, ostensibly, is the band’s quarantine record. Their “iso” record. Their “pando” record. It’s one thing for megastars like Taylor Swift and Charli XCX to offer up their solitary work amidst the new normal — they’re solo artists, for one, and there’s narrative to be found within that wouldn’t otherwise be present in their work.

How does a band forge ahead with a new album, though, when their defining trait of lightning-in-a-bottle rock band chemistry flies out the window? It’s an intriguing prospect, certainly, and it adds a weight of curiosity that hasn’t been felt in the band’s work for some time — at the very least since 2006’s troubled Convicts.

How does a band forge ahead with a new album, though, when their defining trait of lightning-in-a-bottle rock band chemistry flies out the window?

It seems fitting then, that The Lives of Others is You Am I’s most interesting listen since Convicts. There’s an argument to be made that it’s their best since then, as well — and not a meritless one, either. There are, however, some key inconsistencies that make it challenging to put forth as a wholesale recommendation with no provisos attached.

Moments like opener ‘The Waterboy’ capture that unadulterated je ne sais quoi of the band in full flight. There goes Davey Lane’s octave-pedal lead bends; off goes Russell Hopkinson’s shuffling drum flurry. In the midst of it, Rogers positions himself obsessing over the titular character, The Waterboys’ frontman Mike Scott.

Pound for pound, it’s their best single in a decade — if not for its pulsating tension and release, then for Rogers namedropping both Ulladulla and Mollymook in the same breath as Nashville and Las Vegas. Easily the best NSW south-coast musical reference since Cat Power mentioned Wollongong in her 2012 song ‘Ruin’.

Also of note on the record is Lane once again returning to the lead-vocal fold. This was tested out on the band’s previous album, 2015’s Porridge and Hotsauce; Lane’s ‘Buzz the Boss’ remains one of their most underrated cuts. Rogers takes a knee again for two tracks, leaving the band’s “new guy” of 21 years to sing ‘We All Went Deaf Overnight’ and ‘I’m My Whole World Tonight’.

The former is a rambunctious hybrid of Rogers’ glam-rock affinity and Lane’s anglophile Britpop devotion. The latter is pure ’60s swagger that could pass as a Nick Lowe single — or perhaps Lane’s friend Robyn Hitchcock — in a different life. Both, as it happens, are excellent. It doesn’t even make sense to refer to Lane as the band’s secret weapon anymore — everybody knows by now, especially his bandmates.

Miraculous, But Falls Short

Elsewhere amidst The Lives of Others’ 46-minute run-time, however, the self-produced effort falls short of the bar set by these highlights. Some come directly in the wake of ‘The Waterboy’ itself — the first three songs serve as a suite of sorts, all in the key of C and all at near-identical BPMs. It’s unclear if this was done intentionally, but once ‘The Waterboy’ fades out you’re lead into a chunk of diminishing returns.

‘The Third Level’ fails to strike the same chord emotively that ‘The Waterboy’ does, despite literally striking a lot of the same guitar chords. It even falls out of sync at the end, with Hopkinson’s fill not matching up with the guitars — and although that might have been a loose, rock’n’roll end in a live setting, it feels amateurish here.

That’s followed by ‘Rosedale Redux’, where the pros like Rogers and Lane’s back-and-forth chorus are largely mired by the song’s crunchy, confusing production. No other song quite feels like the GarageBand home demo the way this one does. It’s almost like Royal Headache, if you purely emphasised the headache.

The flaws continue to unravel as the album goes on, almost in a simultaneous back-and-forth with its stronger moments. The gentle repose of ‘Manliness’ feels like a side-B centrepiece, rather than sandwiched between two side-A rockers, which adds an awkward pacing to the album; ‘Rubbish Day’, meanwhile, suffers from inexplicable percussion and overstaying its welcome as it crawls past the five-minute mark.

‘Reader’s Comments’, perhaps the weakest point of the album, is as close to 21st-century commentary as you’re likely to get from the old souls, and it ironically feels more dated than lyrics they wrote 25 years ago — and not even the upbeat instrumental can quite compensate.

There are shortcomings, frustrations and challenges that arise throughout The Lives of Others. Is that, however, symptomatic of the band itself or of being created in a year that seemed to be nothing but shortcomings, frustrations and challenges? When you look at the bigger picture, it’s miraculous that the album was able to be created at all. Therein lies its best quality: Resilience.

When The Lives of Others shines, it’s emblematic of You Am I’s ongoing survival. We’ve entered the fifth decade the band has existed within, and the third with this lineup intact. How many other working bands in the world can you say that about? The Lives of Others isn’t a new You Am I classic — truthfully, it’s just happy to be out of the house. Perhaps that’s an achievement in and unto itself, the more that you really think about it.

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David James Young is a freelance writer and podcaster with a heavy heart and a new haircut that cost him just six bucks. Find out more at www.davidjamesyoung.com.