Words by Courtney Gannon
I have no idea what goes on in Australia but it seems like a chill place based on Lost and Tame Impala. The release of their first full-length album, Innerspeaker, couldn’t be timelier: the past year’s onslaught of throwback bands has made people too conscious of the shtick. It isn’t that the washed-out vintage sound isn’t good–it is, and it’s really likable. But Tame Impala have created a record that does not rely on deliberate low-fidelity to conjure nostalgia. Instead of trying to create music they’d have made if they were a band in 1969, Tame Impala makes music that bands like the Seeds might have made if they were recording in 2010.
The band describes their music as “the shoulder bones of a giant striding feline creature through some kind of tunnel.” This is a pretty spot-on summary, but maybe even more telling of their music is that they would say something that sounds that stoned. It is difficult not to slip into synesthetic talk when describing the album, though; they’ve created an uninterrupted groove that rolls and kneads your senses for almost an hour. But there is just enough friction between songs to prevent the boring slipperiness of actual forty-five minute jams.
The single “Solitude is Bliss” is one of the more garage-y tracks, while “Bold Arrow of Time” has a jazz-warm riff and a gradual build that gathers weight and releases in the wonderful way stoner rock does. “Lucidity” is relatively insular and has a beat that holds us tighter than the rest of the album. “Make Up Your Mind” is reminiscent of Roky Erickson, pairing psychedelia with being pissed at a girl.
Kevin Parker’s voice, which is happens to be exactly like John Lennon’s, is probably what gets them a lot of Beatles comparisons. Their music has the spirit of a drowsier Nazz, and they sort of look like them, too. But Tame Impala arrive at classic psych rock by way of meandering backwards, producing a sound that resists the two-dimensionality of a dorm room Cream poster. There is something here fuller than imitation. They move through dewy, often understated psychedelia with melodies unraveling behind them like a ball of tie-dyed yarn. Innerspeaker is a great album and, by the way, the definitive soundtrack to the iTunes visualizer (Modular, 2010).
