You Am I

Hourly Daily
rooArt, 1996

So this guy wakes up when the radio flickers on, catches the bus into town and wonders how to pay the bond on a flat in the inner-west. Later on in the day he buys a six pack of cheap beer and gets nostalgic about some girl he opened a door for back in high school, swings by some record stores and walks back home over the Glebe Point Bridge (before it became a target in John Howard's blitzkrieg of symbolism and was renamed the Anzac Bridge) while the sun's setting over the Sydney skyline and the cars are streaming back into the suburbs. And then later still he winds up at The Annandale Hotel to see a band, steer well clear of fashionable indie types, get drunk, go home, get up and do it all again.

That's more or less the storyline on Hourly, Daily, You Am I's concept album of sorts and the second of their three consecutive records to reach number 1 on the Australian charts in the middle of the '90s. Actually, the above story is just a collage of things mentioned in the songs and stuff Tim Rogers was doing while he thought of them. You could probably make any story you like out of the lyrics – as long as it involved Sydney, public transport, a six pack of beer and a few heartfelt asides. It's the setting that sticks out more than the plot. The band recorded it after a stint in North America, when they returned to find that the nuances of life in Australia were more noticeable after they'd been away for a while.

Rogers described Hourly, Daily as a collection of "songs from different points of the day" and "diary entries from different people" about mundane activities after it was recorded. It's more subdued and melodic than You Am I's first two guitar-heavy albums, Sound As Ever and Hi Fi Way. My favourite track is called 'Tuesday' and has a gorgeous blossom of psychedelic strings and horns in the middle. It's not really about anything in particular, just a bus that comes late and some bread that goes stale. It sounds like the suburbs in summer, and it makes me think of the houses in Lilyfield, on the other side of the bridge.