‘Eventually’, a heartbreak anthem that may or may not be about Parker’s split from Melody’s Echo Chamber’s Melody Prochet, opens with an flurry of guitar chords, before promptly swerving into synth-pop. From the crisp, hip-hop accenting on the drums to the full-bodied bass and vivd synths, ‘Currents’ is an audiophile’s wet dream. Fuzzed-out guitars simply aren’t where Parker’s head is at now, which strikes us as a fair trade-off from a producer pushing at the outer reaches of his talent. Once again, swooning synths are the order of the day, with the latter (key line: “ There’s a world out there and it’s calling me/It’s calling you too”) especially a work of dazzling beauty the layer-cake arrangement suggesting Parker as a natural heir to Brian Wilson’s studio wizardry.Īt which point, we should probably bring up the elephant in the room, which is that, erm, there is no ‘Elephant’ in the room.
Parker follows that bombshell with a dreamy, summer-scented interlude in ‘Nangs’, and another pair of walloping pop tunes in ‘The Moment’ and ‘Yes I’m Changing’. It’s a shock, but in a good way, overflowing with deft production trickery, caressing Daft Punk croons and tightly marshalled bursts of guitar. But in case there’s any lingering doubt, ‘Currents’ begins with ‘Let It Happen’, eight transcendent minutes of shifting, zen-like disco that find Parker telling himself to go with the flow and accept change: “ It’s all around me, this noise, but/Not nearly as loud as the voice saying/ ‘Let it happen, let it happen’”. That much will be clear to anyone who’s been following the months-long teaser campaign for the Perth psych supremos’ third album. Change, and how to deal with it, lies at the heart of ‘Currents’. And, tracing the quintet’s arc from the incendiary riff-rock of early releases to the paranoid fantasia of 2012’s ‘Lonerism’ and this third studio album, that sounds entirely possible.
That would mean Tame Impala mastermind Kevin Parker is literally a different person from the guy who made the band’s self-titled debut EP in 2008. Let’s pretend for a moment the myth is true.
It’s pretty much bullshit, naturally, but cast your mind back to what you were doing seven years ago: was that really you? Now try five years, or even two. You’ve probably heard the story about how the human body replaces all its cells over a period of about seven years.
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