Tame Impala – Currents

Following the absolutely scorching Innerspeaker (2010) and Lonerism (2012) albums, Tame Impala returned in the midsummer of 2015 very much as a band in evolution. Although Tame Impala performed as a full live band, Kevin Parker had already established the project as essentially a solo recording endeavour, writing, recording, engineering, mixing and producing himself, with the making of Currents becoming an intensely solitary process. Following the success of Lonerism, Parker returned to Perth and created a studio in his home, where he could work alone with an arsenal of instruments and other recording equipment all within reach. He described the process almost like sitting in the cockpit of an aircraft: everything he needed was immediately available, allowing him to build songs layer by layer. His perfectionism remained central to the process, working night and day seamlessly as the density of the compositions became ever more advanced.  

The musical transformation was deliberate. Parker had always regarded Tame Impala as pop music filtered through psychedelic production, but on Currents he stopped worrying about whether embracing pop would somehow dilute the project’s identity. He had become increasingly interested in the idea that pop music could be sophisticated and creatively ambitious rather than something an alternative artist needed to keep at arm’s length. Parker’s work with Mark Ronson would prove to be a seminal experience, giving him the confidence to embrace the craft of pop music.

“Mark’s a big reason why I had the confidence to do what I did with Currents. He showed me how pop music could have such a craft to it. Whenever I’m recording with lots of people, like we did on Uptown Special, it makes me think about how solitary my process is. It puts into perspective just how alone I am when I’m working.”
- Kevin Parker

Album opener - Let It Happen - is full of the whirling psychedelia that the band had become so known for, but as the song moves towards its first chorus, Parker’s vocal wraps all around the stereo and disappears into the digitised bleeps and layers of synthesiser, drum machines and disco grooves. It’s subtle, but the band’s brash rock ’n’ roll roots had grown into a new sort of pop psychedelia. The same but different.

Currents would transform Tame Impala into a genuinely global pop act. Introspective, and contrasting melancholy with euphoria, the album also features some of the most immediately memorable melodies of his career. The psychedelia was still there; it had simply moved inside the production. More importantly, Currents demonstrated that an artist could move dramatically away from an established sound without abandoning the qualities that made the music distinctive in the first place. Ten years on, that is arguably the album’s greatest achievement. Currents doesn't sound like a rock band trying to make a disco record. It sounds like Kevin Parker discovering that psychedelic music, electronic music and pop music were never really separate things at all.