Today, You Am I revealed details of their forthcoming 11th studio album, The Lives Of Others, set for release on May 14, 2021. The video accompanies the album’s announcement for the brand new single ‘The Waterboy’, showcasing live band footage compiled and edited by guitarist Davey Lane.

Many of the songs from The Lives Of Others were written on a 2019 trip to the New South Wales south coast, where the band would rehearse when they were starting out in late 1989.

Tim Rogers says: “I was going fishing in the morning, staying in a cheap hotel, and all these folk songs came out, for no reason really but as wordplay.”

Rogers was having doubts about his future in music. “I got a job bartending.  I didn’t tell the guys about it, but I couldn’t envisage us making a record together again. I couldn’t get out of the funk I was in. Then I talked to Tex Perkins about it, and he is wonderful about cutting though my over-dramatic stuff.” Just don’t play for six months, Perkins advised.

Then 2020 happened, and there is nothing like discovering you can’t do what you’ve been hard-wired to do for 30 years to help see things more clearly.

An unexpected bonus of 2020, Rogers says, was having the time to work so intensely on his lyrics. These are some of the best he has brought to the band. The songs range-wide, from questions about what it means to be a man (Manliness) to avoiding opinion overload (Readers’ Comments). The delights of Lookalikes will be the only song you hear this year to find a link between George Orwell, Mackenzie Phillips and Bette Davis.

You Am I The Lives Of Others – Pre-order HERE

Catch the band live at Enmore Theatre April 15 and April Sun, St Kilda on April 22