Tame Impala
Innerspeaker
(Modular)
They say hindsight is 20/20. Were that a reality, every band looking to the 60s for inspiration would produce a fucking classic record. But they don’t. It takes whole lot more than analysing the successes of others to make good music, and it takes much more than nostalgia to make music worth listening to. Tame Impala have may sound like the product of too much time spent smoking up around a turntable with dusty LPs, but they took whatever lessons they could and turned it into something pretty great. Aesthetically, Innerspeaker could fool most baby boomers into thinking it’s an undiscovered gem, but it’s the enthusiasm and energy, its freshness and melody that gets it well and truly over the line between ‘homage’ and ‘art.’
I don’t know whether Tame Impala mastermind Kevin Parker pre-empted the chill/bliss/beachwave movement when he started playing around with flanger pedals and eight-track tape machines years ago, but it’s hard to imagine any time in the past decade when Innerspeaker would be more relevant – despite sounding 40 years old. Check out the long list of publications salivating over their wah-infused, delay twiddling summery psych pop – Pitchfork, Gorilla vs Bear, Stereogum, Weekly Tape Deck et al… pretty much the royalty of the indie blogosphere. Yes, good timing can make or break a band, and in this case I’d say it could turn these potheads from Western Australia into indie superstars.
There’s no bad songs here, just songs measured in degrees of success; from the highs of ‘Solitude is Bliss,’ ‘It is Not Meant to Be,’ and ‘Runway Houses, City Clouds’ through to the less immediately impressive ‘Jeremy’s Storm’ and ‘The Bold Arrow of Time.’ Their ‘pop ‘songs are tight and full of earworms, while their ‘guitar wank’ songs are impressive enough to provide something of a happy ending. And even the songs singled out above as weakest are only weak when studied in isolation, divorced from their context within the album.
And that’s important to note. Like the stuff these dudes drew inspiration from, Innerspeaker is an album’s album. It’s a strong statement of intent, a carefully constructed collection of songs that each cover slightly different territory but are married together by a consistent blanket of warm haze and Parker’s reverb-drenched but surprisingly strong vocals. It’s got the singles, it’s got the deeper cuts, it’s got continuity, flow and a unified aesthetic; it’s got a start and an end and it makes the journey between the two exciting and easy. Those that consider listening to an entire album the equivalent of a hard day’s labor shouldn’t fear – Innerspeaker rates as one of 2k10’s finest simply because it’s one of the most effortlessly enjoyable listens I’ve experienced all year.
I won’t go on too much more. You’ve probably heard the hype. You’ve probably even heard some of the tracks. About half of what’s on here won’t jump out at on you on the radio or while jogging on shuffle, but it’s not meant to. So what if these dudes have their heads in the past? When you do the past this fucking well, you can go as far back as Gregorian chants for all I care.
Matt Hickey