Tame Impala - 'Runway, Houses, City, Clouds'

When we interviewed Gareth Liddiard from the Drones recently, he was asked if he'd heard many new bands. He said 'nope', that he stays away from such things:

I’ve heard The Stooges and I’ve heard Black Flag and I’ve heard MC5 and I’ve heard Led Zeppelin, I’ve heard Hendrix. It’s like – beat that. If you can suggest anything or if you’re a band who can do anything [better than that]...I don’t know. Why should I listen to anything that’s ‘sub-par’, as they say? I can just stick Raw Power on. If someone’s like, “come and see this band!”, it’s like, “Nah, I’ve got Raw Power at home,” and very powerful speakers. Is that wrong?

It's a question that dogs Tame Impala. It seemed a surprise when the fledgling band signed with Modular Records. Lo-fi, self-produced guitar dudes from the suburbs of Perth signing to the home of The Presets, Cut Copy et al. Turn the speakers up though and you get the connection - Tame Impala sound like Wolfmother never got slick, shifted their Sabbath tendencies for joints and Clapton. They arrived on the cusp of the reheated psychedelic movement borne from kids fed up with...the reheated New Wave electro movement. Righto.

'Runway, Houses, City, Clouds' is near seven minute journey through your Dad's record collection. The influence of Cream still holds strong, and you can see why they've supported MGMT twice; pastoral English folk illusions swirl throughout their bombastic (if speaker blown) riffage. After the initial bombast, the song finds itself in Dark Side of The Moon territory. All in all - it's not uninteresting, or unappealing. It's just not that necessary. The game of throwback references with Tame Impala could go on forever, so it's the moments where they express a forward thinking individuality that are going to stick. Such moments are fleeting.

Innerspeaker is out out May 21.