Album Review: Currents, By Tame Impala

We’ve been letting Tame Impala’s third LP, Currents, marinate. Now, fresh from the disco-oven, a verdict.

Kevin Parker wants you to know he’s changing, even if he’s not yet totally changed.

Tame Impala’s third album, Currents, is all about a man/ one-man-band in transition; seeking self-improvement and new sensations, but still falling back on old habits because they just feel too damn good. Same goes sonically. Guitars have largely been jettisoned. That beat though. Hypnotic. Amorous. I’d call it ‘toe-tapping’ if it didn’t make me sound a million years old. In lieu of an easily accessibly disco-floor, this one will live happily in your headphones.

As the sole creative force behind the psychedelic Perth outfit – on this record, he drops the pretence of Tame Impala being a group, outside of live performances – Parker delivers his most clear-headed and consistent collection of songs to date. Ironic, then, that the music should perfect that fuzzy-headed, morning-after feeling.

Leaving behind the stomp and shimmy of Lonerism’s “Elephant” and “Apocalypse Dreams”, Parker doubles down on the success of that sophomore effort’s break-out track “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards”, populating Currents with dreamy grooves and broken-hearted space ballads.

Propulsive opener “Let It Happen” has Parker succumb to the voices in his head and the vibes of the universe in anticipation of transfiguration; albeit, a temporary one. It’s not the only song in which unseen vibrations inspire him to take action; the slowed-down, spoken-word saga “Past Life” tells of a chance sighting of an old flame that moves Parker to “dig up old bones” and try her old phone number one more time. (The warped vocals and rambling narrative seem to be torn from Tyler, the Creator’s playbook; although, considering Tyler’s previously expressed adoration for Tame Impala, maybe the inspiration’s been flowing the other way around.)

Is that old flame the resurrected subject of “Eventually”, who Parker dumped for her own good a few tracks earlier? “I know that I’ll be happier, and I know you will too,” he sings, laying out his priorities. “Eventually” follows his self-congratulatory tribute to his own maturity, “Yes, I’m Changing”. So, this is how he defines ‘evolved’? Good thing it doesn’t last long. His backslide in Currents’ second-half suggests that Parker is savvy enough to report his momentary flowering with tongue planted firmly in cheek. (This Muppet-music video suggests the same.)

As skilled as he is at making excuses – “’Cause I’m A Man”; “New Person/Same Old Mistakes” – Parker’s even better at embedding indelible hooks in ethereal soundscapes. His falsetto evokes Prince, Michael Jackson and Midnite Vultures-era Beck; not where any of us expected an act initially cut from the Jet & Wolfmother cloth to wind up.

The chipper tunes to “Disciples” and “Reality In Motion” mask lyrics of doubt, regret and annoyance. As his musical and professional confidence expands, his personal confidence craters. The man who opens the album is different to the one who closes it, making Currents one of the most satisfying narrative journeys of the year, let alone aural ones. He wants to be a better dude. At first, he wrongly thinks he’s made it. The triumphant arc? Parker settling on the realisation he’s got a ways to go.

“People never change, but that’s b*******, they do,” Kev sings. Turns out he had it backwards. Music changes. It’s people who stay the same.

4.5/5

Currents is now available.