Albury seems to be a favourite starting point for national tours when bands actually bother playing there, so on the downside, the bands may be a little out of form, but the upside is of course that they're fresh. Since You Am I are a well seasoned live outfit, to the say the least, playing into form isn't going too much of a problem. All I can say is, even if you think their last few albums have been a little off the boil - which is definitely not the case for Deliverance, might I add - you'd be a fool to miss them.

This happened to be the first time I ventured to the Liquid Niteclub (sic), since I'm way, way, way too old for the juvenile meat market nights that is the place's usual function. (At 29, go figure...) As it is, the good news is that Liquid kicks the crap out of the Termo in terms of punter comfort, even though it seems a wee bit smaller. There a still a few things to trip over, but it's nothing like the bizarre split level setup sported by the Termo, of whom the proprietors have never had the money to fix properly. Better sized stage, better viewing areas if you like to stand at the back, and importantly, no pylons. All will be peachy if they continue booking decent bands like You Am I and that alongside all the populist dreck like Taxiride and 28 Days. As for the acoustics, hmm... as I left the venue, some bloke who was chatting on a mobile out on the street sounded like a Dalek with the batteries run down, a rather bad sign, but 24 hours later, my ears seem to have sorted themselves out, which is better than a couple of other gigs I've been to.

Nevertheless, being incapacitated in the hearing department for a day seems a minor hassle given the pleasure of watching Tim and Co crank it up; Rogers' tics and struts and swaggers and windmills might possibly seem a little hammy, on occasion almost reaching John Spencer standards, but damn, given the context of the pop-rock classicism of the You Am I oeuvre, it all fits into place. This cat is in control. And they did seem pleased to be in Albury, for some odd reason, though that might have just been because of Tim and Andy swigging those bottles of the local red. There wasn't any sort of "hmm, we're playing in Podunk, we can slack off a bit" for them, thank grud. This lot are going to be burning by the time they hit the cities. Be warned...

The set, as expected, consisted of a good swathe of Deliverance, as pleasantly über-You Am I as promised, plus choice selections from the old stuff; "Soldiers" and "Cathy's Clown" were carried off with aplomb, and I was reminded that there are some decent songs on Dress Me Slowly aside from "Damage" (not in this set), namely "Beautiful Girl" and "Get Up", that but they clearly enjoy playing the new stuff like the opener "Words For Sadness", a relatively quiet thing to open with, though given that after "'Til The Clouds Roll Away" songs in they were cranking out "Deliverance" like there was no tomorrow, this was possibly the only place they could stick it. "Who Put The Devil In You" cranked with a capital K, "Nuthin's Ever Gone Be The Same Again" was as fun live as one suspected it might, and they even managed to sell "Nifty Lil Number Like You" to me again, since I regard that nifty little number irritating to the point of skipping over it when playing the record. Possibly this was because the sibilants were sheared off the chorus hook by the wonky sound system. Same sibilant mangling also meant I could not make head nor tail of Tim's banter, but whatever he was saying, he was certainly switched on.

Personally, missing You Am I in their previous peak during '94-'96 is a blot on my copybook (hey, I was busy being a Clouds fanboy instead), but on this performance, I have absolutely no doubt they still have "it" in spades. So they've replaced the somewhat introspective observations of Hi Fi Way and Hourly Daily, with perhaps a more wham-bam approach that's indicative of an outfit that know that they're good and aren't afraid to show it off, and aren't afraid of changing. Big deal. The funny thing is, there's still that core of vulnerability at the band's heart; it's one thing to be stentorian in an attempt to hide that, lest it be perceived as weakness, or worse still, to do insincere "ballads" that point to that vulnerability with big pointy arrows. It's another thing to have the confidence to just let it all hang out, the good, the bad and ugly, without dressing it up or dressing it down, to let the listener make their own conclusions. You Am I may well be showmen, but they're not charlatans. What you see is what you get.

Oh, and Dallas Crane? Poor bastards. If supporting You Am I doesn't quite have the reputation for playing to fans with no patience as opening for the Oils would be, they've still certainly got it tough paving the way for a band with some of the best tunes in the business. I wouldn't say they completely suck arse, as a friend put it, at the least they weren't boring in that they only compelled me to go to the toilet once, they do know how to play their instruments, and they did manage to get my head nodding a few times (when I wasn't going - "hmm, they ripped that riff out of King Crimson's Discipline") particularly with one seven-minute number. But I'm a sucker for seven minute numbers, so that's not saying much. More tunage rather than just riffs and licks would be nice, I think.