Currents
Tame Impala
(Fiction)
Five stars
Tame Impala started promisingly enough as a psych-rock throwback with their 2010 debut InnerSpeaker. Continuing that aesthetic could have made for a nice little recording career, but little did we see that slowly percolating inside the Australian rockers was a budding pop star.
With the group's latest and album of the year contender, Currents, lead singer and guitarist Kevin Parker — the brains, talent, ambition and basically everything else behind the project — has achieved something placing him firmly among the tastemakers of the industry: the Kanyes, the Ezra Koenigs, the Jamie XXs who all created trends others followed.
Currents is a polished, confident offering that stands apart from InnerSpeaker or even 2012's excellent Lonerism. And it's unashamedly a pop record, with few guitars and plenty of synth.
The group are already a festival favourite, but neither Parker nor Tame Impala are household names just yet — nor is it really apparent that's where their ambitions lie. Currents will only augment their popularity, but while the record doesn't lack radio-friendly tunes, there's still plenty of experimentation here to parse through.
Cause I'm a Man is a great summer song. It's breezy and fun to sing along to, especially while trying to hit the same notes as Parker in his John Lennon-like falsetto. Eventually is a wonderful, easy-to-digest break-up ballad that hasn't left my daily playlist since it was first leaked a couple months ago.
But there's plenty here that stays just a little oblique and left-of-centre. Let It Happen is a seven-minute romper of an opener that would make any 1970s nostalgist feel welcome for the first few minutes, snapping along with funky, disco-inspired synths and rhythms. Then, in the middle of the track, comes a time-turn and a panicky, looping bridge that continues for more than a minute before going right back to the early disco groove. It's an ingenious recording trick that might make less-patient listeners give up, but proves effective at shirking any expectations.
As a whole, Currents is so heavily produced and dense it's as though Parker is just showing off what he's capable of — all while never coming off as pretentious. He's not the longhair face of some revivalist movement and deserves to be considered among the most visionary studio artists working at present. The album is a clear statement that, while Parker has all the chops in the world to be a star, it'll come on his terms. He has our attention.
kjeffers@thenational.ae
