deliverance
Rating: 4/5

Oz heroes mixed bag of a second album turned around in record time.

If You Am I's plan, with this - a perversly rapid second album considering the last took three - was to create the ultimate rock & roll record, then they've failed miserably. If they were, however, aiming to come off like a mixed bag at a jumble sale, it couldn't be more on the money. A motley crew of dispirited cello and moody piano, hand-in-hand with the customary blistering guitar asthetics, makes Tim Rogers' exact manifesto this time round all the more puzzling.

Tracks like the first single "Who Put The Devil In You" (Cue handclaps) are classic, sweaty, cartwheeling, riff-heavy You Am I, boyed by the bluesy singalong "One Trick Tony" and "Nifty 'Lil Number Like You", which degenerates completely into alt-country territory. "City Lights" swoons about true love like a forgotten My Friend The Chocolate Cake melody, while "Nothin's Gonna Be The Same Again" is all blazing wah-wah guitar, with a rocky Espanol swagger and Rogers' euphoria over fatherhood at the heart of it.

You Am I gave themselves weeks to rehearse and record Deliverance - and in turn produced their most gloriously diverse and inconsistent album to date. Is it all part of a new master plan? Who cares? It's all worked out handsomely in the end.

Alicia Broderson