You Am I followed the brilliant Hi Fi Way with the equally impressive Hourly, Daily. The album was recorded at Q Studios, Sydney during December 1995 by Wayne Connolly and Paul McKercher and mixed by David Bianco (Teenage Fanclub). It was the first time the band had recorded an album in Australia.

Tim talks about how the album came about: "Russell and I were in New York, sharing a room together, and we went out and got stinkin' at the Jones Bar and ran around New York with our shirts off because we were drunk, declaring that we would herald the return of beat music - music that had a hop to it, a skip to it, that made you want to shimmy. The next morning while vomiting, we declared that we would make a beat record."

Recording in Australia gave the band time to relax. It also let them go home at the end of a day's work. Despite the easier schedule, the band deliberately kept rehearsals to a minimum, keeping their ideas fresh and their performances spontaneous.

Sydney jazz maestro Jackie Orszaczky gathered a string quartet and a small horn section, scoring the melody the band hummed at him. Producer Paul McKercher added the cello. It's part of what Tim calls "a fruit injection".

"We're not going to labour over songs till we kill them," says Rogers. "Two of the songs (Good Mornin' and "If We Can't Get It Together) were actually written four days before we started,"
"The material really started forming in those long months towards the end of a tour. That's probably why the album is so referencial to Australia, not for any patriotic reasons but because after so long on the road touring and playing, the whole process becomes perpetual motion and daily home life becomes surreal.

"Most of it is about things that most people perceive as mundane but to someone just out of the van appears very psychedelic and affectionate. That's what the title Hourly, Daily tries to capture. That's the way the album was going. Songs from different points of the day, diary entries from different people. It moves through every hour of every day... that's about as vague as I can get."

Hourly, Daily debuted at number one on the national ARIA charts - the second consecutive You Am I album to do so and went on to win 6 awards in 1996 ARIA's including: Best Australian Group, Album, Independent Release, Video (for Soldiers), Producer and Engineer of the year.

Hourly, Daily Lyrics