You Am I quickly followed up the long awaited Dress Me Slowly with Deliverance, released in September 2002. It was finished just 10 months after the release of Dress Me Slowly and was made "for a 10th of the cost" and roughly a 20th of the pain. Rogers, Kent, Hopkinson and guitarist Davey Lane knocked it over in three weeks, with help from local keyboard maestro Bruce Haymes, upright bassist Shannon Birchall and long-term sound-desk associate Paul McKercher.

Rogers took BMG managing director Ed St John out for a drink in late 2001 and argued his case. He had the songs. He didn't need bags of money for plane tickets, demo sessions and hot-shot overseas producers. "I figured either he'd drop us (from the label) or let us give it a shot. He said, 'Go for it'."

"To call a record Deliverance, you've got to be pretty cocky, I guess." explains Tim. "We were feeling that way when we were making it, for sure. We had Motor Ace next door (at Melbourne's Sing Sing Studios), labouring away on this beautiful, well-crafted record," he says in a tone suggesting mistrust of studio polish, "and typical of us, when we find out that somebody is striving for greatness, possibly achieving it, we think, 'Right, let's fuck up as much as possible, make it all ragged; the first take is a good take', that kind of thinking."

The title of the record was born when Rogers noticed a subtle thematic thread running through the 12 songs, the notion of "some kind of release, or the epiphanies that can come with being surrounded by loud rock'n'roll music".

"Deliverance seems to sum that up - a release from the constraints of the music that's thrown down your throat through mainstream media; deliverance through playing a great show or playing together as a band. It's almost a religious ritual, a speaking in tongues."

The emotional centrepiece of Deliverance is 'Til the Clouds Roll Away, a potent song about riding out mood swings, plainly addressed to Mrs Rogers, Rocio, and the pair's one-year-old daughter, Ruby. The swirling, nebulous riff fades in and out of the album twice, like a recurring dizzy spell.

"Yeah, that piece of music?" Rogers begins thoughtfully. "Because I feel a lot of love and a lot of anxiety and a lot of desperation, those chords kinda sum it all up. Yeah, that's the way I feel. It's beautiful and then it gets kinda kaleidoscopic, beautiful colours bleeding in with darker colours, and you just have to wait until your cloud rolls in again."

The real substance of Deliverance arrives in the final track, a soft, solo acoustic guitar number titled When You Know What You Want. It comes across like a whispered manifesto for the darkest of days - songwriting at its most vulnerable and inspirational.

"I sorta see Deliverance as our king hit," Rogers states for the record. "I mean, I LOVE Dress Me Slowly, but if that one was the most You Am I record, this one's uber You Am I."


Deliverance Lyrics