You Am I - Hi Fi Way

You Am I recorded their 'difficult' second album, Hi Fi Way, at Greene Street Studios, New York from September 15-22, 1994 - straight after their much publicised support slot on Soundgarden's national tour of America. They teamed up again with Lee Ranaldo to produce Hi Fi Way. Ranaldo shared the mixing duties with Jon Auer, (The Posies) who also played some Hammond organ on the album.

You Am I went into the studio unsure what musical direction to take Tim's songs in, many of which were still without lyrics. They were also completely worn out after the Soundgarden tour and working to a tight recording schedule. Tim eventually overcome a bout of writers block and found inspiration in his childhood. "Suddenly all these things started to come," he says. "I had perspective on those events. I could admit things. It was really fun."

"Most of the tunes had their own central idea, but our usually rushed time frame and a complete inability to edit left some ideas more enunciated than others, for example Jewels & Bullets was written in 10 minutes just before recording it at 4am on the last night of recording."

"Applecross Wing Commander is about being 9 and pretending you're an airplane (specifically the corsairs in Baa-ba Black Sheep with Robert Conrad...) at lunchtime. The Wing Commander's sister's name was Jane methinks... Once again there's fiction with the non. She Digs Her, Minor Byrd and Punkarella are about folks, but exacerbated versions of 'em; whenever the truth got in the way of Rusty's fills... the lyric would be forever changed! I mean, do you sleep on your dick? No, well don't step on the drummer!"

After rushing through recording the album, Tim was unsure about what the band had done. "When we finished making this album in seven days - it was pretty hazy at the end and totally amphetamine logic 'cause we had no time - I was freaking out, being a total arsehole," recalls Tim. "I went back to this loft we were staying at in New York, at six in the morning, and I was just crying all day. I couldn't believe it. I thought, 'I've totally fucked up this record, this is shit.' I spent the next three days at a bar called Boo Radley's on a bender."

Released in February 1995, Hi Fi Way was greeted with five-star reviews throughout the local music press and scored the band its second consecutive ARIA award for 'Best Alternative Album'. It is regarded as one of the greatest Australian albums of the '90s and a benchmark in Australian music.

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