“Just have to trust my senses”: How ‘Currents’ saw Tame Impala abandon psych-rock
It’s hard to imagine Tame Impala‘s Kevin Parker ever being remotely worried about the success of Currents.
Because upon immediate release, it was culturally adored, and now, just over a decade on from its release, its place in the pantheon of all-time greats is truly cemented. It was a record desperately needed in a somewhat dire musical landscape – indie was bleeding into pop, and pop was bleeding into indie, and there was no real discernible evidence that an authentic scene existed, then Tame Impala dropped Currents, and it felt like this otherwise wilted exploration for innovation had been revitalised.
But Parker wasn’t releasing that album with the confidence of a man knowing he was about to drop a classic. No, there was a deep sense of hesitancy within the Australian, as he wondered whether he had gone too far in indulging his ideas.
On the tenth anniversary of the record, Parker shared that he “had more than one existential crisis during the making and release of this album. I couldn’t tell if it was great or embarrassingly bad, not to mention the fans I would lose by switching up music styles so heavily. People recently have asked me if I was feeling pretty chuffed with myself after making this album, and the answer is always absolutely not! There was often so much doubt, but I knew it was an album I had to make.”
Because while the benefit of hindsight clearly tells us that Currents felt like the right record for music in that time, it was, in fact, a bold individual step forward for Parker. His previous album, Elephant, marked him as the future of psych-rock, whose delicate ability to craft a melody was offset by heavy distorted riffs and Currents, while psychedelic in places, felt like a distinct departure from that.
“People were expecting it to be a particular type of psych rock, and that drove me to do the opposite,” remembered Parker. “I just have to trust my senses because for me, as long as I’m doing it, as long as I put that kind of energy into it, that’s what makes it Tame Impala.”
He added that his “inner teenage rebel” is what sparked a desire to step away from expectation and write something that would divide fans, for better or worse. He said, “I guess it wants me to bluff people and rebel against what is expected of me.”
With Currents, Parker proved an age-old musical tale to be somewhat true: evolution is at the very heart of greatness. Sometimes an artist has to delve into the depths of their ideas that their adoring fan base may not want from them, to deliver an album they need and not what they want.
Because Currents was the album we needed in 2015. At that time, we were all changing – Parker the artist and we as a culture. When Currents came along, it wrapped the myriad influences that were desperately vying for attention and put them into one succinct album, soundtracking a generation in cultural limbo.
