Lunchtime today, head still reeling from a 550 mile drive yesterday, I settled down on my couch with a book and Tame Impala Innerspeaker on the deck*. Fifteen minutes later I woke up and suavely wiped the drool from my chin, having taken a gently therapeutic journey floating across the sky on billowy pillowy clouds.
Music to send you to sleep. In a good way?
A Beatles nut of my acquaintance first hipped me to Tame Impala Innerspeaker shortly after it was released in 2010 and I bought it because a) I liked the cover b) I’m very difficult to sell records too c) It was a Wednesday; although not necessarily in that order.
I can clearly remember putting it on for the first time and thinking ‘oh, that’s very Beatles-y’ and quite liking it. I will come out and say whilst I have always quite liked bits of Innerspeaker it has never really moved me.
I am always utterly in awe of people who can do it all themselves and Kevin Parker does, mostly, on Innerspeaker. He spins his own musical world out of melody and candyfloss psychedelia and his vocals are very reminiscent of a certain John Winston Lennon throughout. It is a consistent, well-played and very well-produced/mixed LP.
Highlights for me are:
- Jeremy’s Storm – an instrumental woven from some lovely clean guitar sounds and a bit more bass.
- Lucidity – the floatingest of the floaties and Parker’s best 60’s vocal on the LP.
- The Bold Arrow Of Time – for the title alone and for some excellent Cream-influenced heaviness.
- I Don’t Really Mind – hints at a ear-worming pop sensibility and a future electronic direction.
Which are all great but Innerspeaker is just pitched at too treble-y and wafty a level for me. Every so often I would really like Tame Impala hit a harder, deeper, weightier seam of psych, as at 53 minutes, despite excellence of playing and execution it becomes all too samey and I just want to stomp off and play Lawnmower Deth. The similarly pitched early Stone Roses tempered their summer tones with a superlative drummer and a working class earthiness.
For me the best thing of all about Innerspeaker is the excellent video they released for the single ‘Lucidity’ where they send a weather balloon skywards in Victoria and you can see the curve of the Earth**.
So Innerspeaker did a job for me today and I am grateful, right LP at the right time and it isn’t a bad album at all, it just needs a touch of grit to anchor it a little, to make it matter more when you listen to it.
Tame Impala, bit too Same Impala, but certainly not Lame Impala.
Until then, I will keep pushing out the Z’s until I can see the curve of the Earth.
1073 Down.
*joint best thing about working from home.
**yesterday I passed two bits of graffiti proclaiming the Earth is flat. Scotland, eh?