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Predictions of the death of the rock’n’roll band have been around almost as long as rock’n’roll itself. Every time, a group comes along to prove just how wrong a prediction can be. But only the truly great ones can keep on doing it, record after record, decade after decade. In the history of Australian music, few have rocked so hard, for so long, as You Am I. Or sent so many sweat-soaked, happy fans back out into the night after another show they will never forget. In the ’90s they became the first Australian band to release three albums in succession to debut at No 1. Those albums -- Hi Fi Way, Hourly, Daily and #4 Record – did not just speak to a generation of fans but now are rightfully seen as timeless masterpieces of Australian rock. And 30 years after their recording debut, few have the inspiration or the hunger to deliver an album as powerful as this year’s 11th studio set, The Lives of Others. You Am I, formed by singer, songwriter and guitarist Tim Rogers, played the first Big Day Out festival in Sydney in 1992. By the time they joined the Big Day Out multi-city tour in 1993 they had a fan in Lee Ranaldo from American band Sonic Youth. In Sydney he co-produced their EP Coprolalia and joined them again in the US later in the year to produce their debut album, Sound as Ever. By the time of the album’s release in November that year, the band’s classic trio line-up was in place with bassist Andy Kent and drummer Russell Hopkinson. Three singles from the album, Adam’s Rib, Berlin Chair and Jaimme’s Got a Gal, went into high rotation on Triple J. In 1994 the band won their first ARIA Award in the new category of Best Alternative Release. The three singles all figured in Triple J’s listener-voted Hottest 100 in January 1995, with Berlin Chair at No 23. Rogers had shown his hand as a mighty rock’n’roll songwriter, melodicist and lyricist, teamed with two players who perfectly complemented his pop-rock vision. The band returned to the US to record Hi Fi Way, again with Ranaldo producing, and they returned home with an album that confirmed all their potential. It topped the charts in February 1995 but soon it became clear this was not just a breakthrough album but one for the ages. All the band’s fire and raw guitar crunch was there in songs like Jewels and Bullets and Minor Byrd, and the bass and drums of Kent and Hopkinson was an unstoppable force. But now the music had all the light and shade, and tuneful ambition, of the rock’n’roll records that inspired the band in the first place. Cathy’s Clown demanded the listener sing along. Purple Sneakers melded acoustic guitar, vivid suburban imagery and an irresistible melody. And when an audience hears people, places and stories they feel like they know in the songs, they are with you all the way. The 2010 book 100 Best Australian Albums placed Hi Fi Way at No 8. Hourly, Daily, released in 1996, found the band broadening their musical range, with orchestral flavours on the title tune and Heavy Comfort, the flourish of brass on Soldiers and the collision of power and pop at the heart of Mr Milk and Good Mornin’. The riches were so great that If We Can’t Get It Together, surely one of the greatest Australian rock songs, didn’t make the cut as a single. The album debuted at No 1 and won them six ARIA Awards, including album of the year, best group and best independent release. #4 Record, released in 1998, was packed with songs that grab the listener the first time and just seem to get better down the years, from the pop hooks of What I Don’t Know ’Bout You to one of Rogers’ finest morning-after elegies, Heavy Heart. In 1999, teenage guitar whiz Davey Lane joined the band, the line-up first heard on record on that year’s live album … Saturday Night, ’Round Ten. Lane made his studio album debut with 2001’s Dress Me Slowly. Not only had he joined his favourite band, he sounded like he had always belonged, adding striking parts to treasures like Beautiful Girl, Damage and Kick a Hole in the Sky. Playing in a band, even one as successful as You Am I, is seldom as easy as it looks. Yet this is a band founded on deep friendships, with an inner resilience that allows them to focus on what they are best at and overcome the obstacles anyone else throws in their path. The band’s 2003 compilation The Cream and the Crock is as essential a primer to the story of Australian rock’n’roll as a greatest hits collection by The Easybeats or Daddy Cool. There are plenty more nuggets to be found too on Deliverance (2002), Convicts (2005), Dilettantes (2008), You Am I (2010) and Porridge & Hotsauce (2015). In 2020, like the rest of the world, You Am I had to figure out a new way to keep the flag flying, even when stuck in different cities, unable to fly. The result is The Lives of Others, an album that song-for-song ranks alongside their finest work. Sure, somewhere out there someone will be predicting the demise of rock’n’roll or the death of the noisy, urgent, uplifting guitar band. But just take a listen to The Lives of Others. Arguments to the contrary do not come any more emphatic than that.