If you thought You Am I’s best music was behind them, the band’s latest single “The Waterboy” should quickly dispel you of that notion. While there’s a nostalgic charm about their ‘90s material, I think this track is every bit as good as those classics. In fact, it might just be better.
“On the Waterboys album Modern Blues I found a Mike Scott song called ‘I Can See Elvis’. It just killed me, I couldn’t stop listening to it,” Tim Rogers explained of the song’s inspiration. “Mike is a big-hearted person, he really puts it all out there and I like that. I was on the New South Wales south coast listening to a Scottish guy living in Ireland singing about Elvis and that led to the four places line.”
The song came together despite the band’s pandemic separation, with Tim and Davey Lane in Melbourne and Andy Kent and Russell Hopkinson in Sydney. Tim conceived this song as a laidback folky number, but after Andy and Russell recorded parts in a Sydney studio it began to take on a whole different complexion.
“What they did was very different to what I had imagined for the song and made it so much better,” he explained. “’The Waterboy’ began as a folk tune set to fingerpicking but when peak “pining” for our band hit I imagined being in a room together and changed the whole feel of the toon. Typically, what Russ, Davey and AK came back with eviscerated all my daydreamin’s and replaced them with jumpin’ round the room enthusiasms.”
“The Waterboy” comes from You Am I’s highly anticipated 11th studio album, which will drop later this year. While the pandemic tore them apart, the band is finally back together and itching to get back on stage. Catch them at Sydney’s Enmore Theatre on April 15.
Image used with permission from Revolutions per Minute