The album that made Kevin Parker want to make music
Since the release of the debut Tame Impala album Innerspeaker in 2010, Kevin Parker has cemented himself as one of the most important names in modern alternative music. At the centre of the Australian psychedelic revival, Tame Impala quickly became essential listening for indie kids worldwide and received great commercial success, from Grammys to platinum records.
Parker also drummed and produced for sister band Pond, who gained similar acclaim and recognition in the 2010s for their innovative psychedelic rock. But what were the records that inspired young Kevin Parker to pursue music?
In a 2013 interview with The Guardian, Parker names Silverchair’s 1997 album Freak Show as the record that made him want to make music. He shared: “I got into this album because my brothers were into it – they listened to a lot of grunge. That time – I was 10 or 11 – was all about discovering rock music and realising how bad-ass it was.”
Silverchair were a grunge rock band from Australia who started making music together as teenagers. They first gained success with the release of their second album Freak Show, which gained them an Australian number one and sold 1.5 million copies.
Parker added: “My brother had a drum kit, and I started learning how to play. Actually, I started playing drums before I had the ambition to be in a band, but as soon as I fell in love with grunge, that was all I wanted to do. Grunge gave me a sense of identity, and I remember really associating with Silverchair, who were these chilled-out Australian teenagers.”
While Parker’s discography often seems much slicker and sunnier than the grunge rock of Silverchair, he commented, “The fact they were teenagers was a big deal for me. It was like: Oh man, you don’t have to be a 30-year-old to do this”. Rather than influencing his sound, it seems, Silverchair offered Parker an entry into alternative music and the confidence to pursue it.
From Silverchair, Parker was introduced to a whole new world of music. He goes on to suggest that Cream’s 1967 album Disraeli Gears got him into psych rock: “I loved that rumbling, fuzzed-out sound,” while Talkie Walkie by French electronica duo Air influenced the sound of Tame Impala. You can immediately hear its influence on Parker from the muted, fuzzy synths on the first track, ‘Venus’.
He calls the album an “emotional soundtrack” and an “enhancer” to his years at university: “I was really inspired by the way they layered melodies and sounds to create a sort of electronic orchestra. That opened my eyes to new studio possibilities because it was just two guys, but they were making a world of sounds. It made me realise that it doesn’t have to sound like a band, it can sound like something totally different.”
With wide-ranging influences from grunge to electronic, Parker has cultivated a unique psych rock for the modern audience, which has retained him a position as one of the biggest names in indie for a decade and everyone’s go-to summer artist.
