Whatever the psych-rock die-hards might otherwise think, Tame Impalaâs third album is a legitimate triumph
Tame Impala | Currents | Modular/Universal/Fiction/Interscope
Anybody who eagerly heard the first single to be released from Tame Impalaâs third album was probably surprised, at best flabbergasted. Represented here as its opening track, Let It Happen was built upon airy, queasy synths whirring and humming, disturbed by a somewhat portentous cod-string section and a jarring loop as if the recordâs progress was being repeatedly stunted, then returned to the principal melody though offset by epileptic snippets of electronic mosquito buzzes and heavily treated, layered vocals. Broadly speaking, the guitars seemed to have vanished: unless you counted the colossal riff that featured in the songâs coda, boasting a sound seemingly lifted from Daft Punk circa their third effort Human After All. It was, and is, somnambulant, grandiose dance-rock, a surprising, completely new direction for Kevin Parkerâs psych-rock project. One thing remained intact on Let It Happen, and still features heavily on Currents: Parkerâs penchant for phasing effects, which, added to the Daft Punk-aping guitar riff from Let It Happen, gloriously wrong-footed the listener into thinking theyâd stumbled across something the early-noughties Gallic house sound known as the French touch would have expelled.
Fans of Parkerâs music might be a little disappointed, probably due to the lack of what some might call âguitaringâ. But, the guitars havenât completely gone â Eventuallyâs main hook comes with a generous slab of dense guitaring, albeit bookended by more gauzy, dazed keyboards â but have been regulated to a backseat position, no longer the key draw or focal point for listeners of a certain disposition to get off their heads to. Fans might also be disappointed for another reason: the suspicious preponderance of arguably cheesy 70s disco and 80s synthpop influences, new flavours added into the Tame Impala mix that may not necessarily go down well with everyone. Everything comes coated in a haze of analogue synthesisers, backed by a curtain of ambient electronics. Only Disciples reverts back to the old Tame Impala or, at the very least, their second album Lonerismâs bubblegum-psych dabbling, the latter continued on the fantastic The Less I Know the Better: full of brazenly magnificent melodies, from the elastic bassline to the glistening synths and Parkerâs honeyed falsetto; the strong disco elements are bold and unabashed. Itâs a legitimate triumph, laced with a funny, ruefully amusing lyric: âI ran out the door to get her, she was holding hands with Trevor/ Not the greatest feeling ever.â The song comes as close as Currents does to the ballast of its reported dance influence, which Parker attributed to the effect of hearing the Bee Geesâ Staying Alive while under the influence of shrooms and whilst also, in his words, âcoked upâ. However imprecise it sounds, anyone trying to replicate the sensation of listening to Staying Alive whilst under the influence of cocaine and shrooms could do worse than The Less I Know the Better â it does indeed sound like the Bee Geesâ disco phase after taking several acid tabs. By his own admittance, Parker acknowledges that something like The Less I Know the Better âshouldnât be on a Tame Impala album because it has this dorky, white disco funk.â
That might be Parker selling himself a bit short, because you canât really see why some might object to the new sound Currents forges. By and large, all the tenets of psychedelia are present and correct: songs that unexpectedly shift gears or suddenly drop in temperature, a general swaying mood harnessing the mind-expanding quality of the transcendent music, and, of course, more flanging and phasing effects than you could shake a stick at. The albumâs best track barely lasts more than two minutes: Nangs plunges you into a bath of phasing, wavering, seasick synths and a decidedly hip-hop-influenced beat against stoned, metronomic drums, verging into something approaching rumbling, bass-heavy psych-soul before cutting off abruptly before the melody takes off. Elsewhere, Currents treats the listener to utterly mutable, ambiguous music, the kind worthy of the genre tag âpsychâ, the best of which is demonstrated on The Moment. Youâre constantly unsure as to where itâs going to take you next, Parker thoroughly in the midst of updating his fuzzy psych-rock, a bold graduation from Lonerismâs synth-addled prog-pop that was as much inspired by Todd Rundgrenâs A Wizard, a True Star as Britney Spears. The electronics, saturated in heavy distortion and phasing effects, twitter away and chirp incessantly, all the while sounding both upbeat and disconcertingly sprawling. Yes, Iâm Changing ostensibly details his breakup from modern psych-pop maiden Melody Prochet of Melodyâs Echo Chamber â whose debut album Parker produced â to the tune of billowing synth accompaniment, an weird inversion of soft-rock and more disco, underscoring the narcotic darkness that was arguably as much a part of those two 70s rock and pop styles as indulging in expensive taste, capturing the narcotised aura and desperate longing, topped off with what sounds like a modernised, arpeggiated harpsichord riff. The production is uniformly excellent; Parkerâs reputation as a perfectionist made manifest in the meticulous attention to detail. Sonic tricks include Past Lifeâs phased-out bass throb that constantly shifts, setting itself adrift from its moorings, could easily be mistaken for self-indulgence â it opens with a distorted, heavily treated spoken-word vocal â though it doesnât come across that way, mainly because the song is largely cohesive, a spectacular mind-altering whole.
Greater still, and perhaps to the further annoyance of Tame Impala fans anticipating another Lonerism or Innerspeaker, Parker embraces textures more indebted to the fertile point where R&B and pop converge. New Person, Same Old Mistakes is deep, funky and writhing, almost identical to the kind of thing Timbaland mightâve produced for Aaliyah or Nelly Furtado, sporting an abrupt middle-eight pitched higher than the rest of the song. âCause Iâm a Man has mid-80s Prince all over it, a stately slice of funk-soul, with a chorus that really sticks and thatâs sure to be doing the rounds in your head for a remarkably long time, the sort of tune you wouldnât mind submerging yourself under for four minutes. Speaking of the âprofound emotional effectâ that he experienced during that drug-enhanced hearing of the Bee Geesâ Staying Alive, Parker said that, above of all, the motivation for creating Currents was a desire to make music that would âtransportâ him as, in his eyes, all the best psychedelia does â and indeed Currents does too. You get the feeling that, as much as he clearly loves psychedelic music, he couldnât be the least bit bothered if any of Currents bears a striking resemblance to The Piper at the Gates of Dawn or Disraeli Gears. Itâs an attitude thatâs both knowingly irreverent and emphatically refreshing, an attitude from an artist keen never to repeat himself. May he continue to surprise and flabbergast for the foreseeable future.
