Re: Psych List
Posted: 18 Jul 2015 07:47
9.3 di pitchfork
[spoiler]After two Tame Impala albums that centered on Kevin Parker's withdrawal from society, he has entered the stream of life on Currents. And he's lonelier than ever. The bemused, occasionally melancholy isolation that defined Innerspeaker and Lonerism has metastasized into heartbreak, bitterness, regret—feelings that can actually kill you if left untended. This is a breakup record on a number of levels—the most obvious one being the dissolution of a romantic relationship, but also a split with the guitar as a primary instrument of expression and even the end of the notion that Tame Impala is anything besides Kevin Parker and a touring band of hired guns. Because of these shifts, the question of whether Currents is better than his first two albums is beside the point: it stands completely apart.
Parker has never minced words about his intentions, and there's a song here called "Yes I'm Changing". The music communicates even more clearly: Currents' opening salvo "Let It Happen" has barely any audible guitars and makes ingenious use of a passage where it sounds like a half-second loop is accidentally stuck on repeat. It's a despairing, open-ended psych-disco hybrid whose closest modern analog is Daft Punk's Random Access Memories—a record that cast disco, yacht rock, and dance pop as shared founts of old-school, hands-on music-making. In this sense, the album reimagines and expands Tame Impala's relationship to album rock—like Loveless or Kid A or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, it's the result of a supernaturally talented obsessive trying to perfect music while redefining their relationship to album-oriented rock. There's more care and nuance put into the drum filtering on "Let It Happen" than most bands manage in an entire career of recording.
Currents is the result of many structural changes, most of which exchange maximalist, hallucinatory swirl for intricacy, clean lines. As we knew from "Elephant", the song that Parker sheepishly admitted "[paid] for half my house," Parker is good at writing catchy, simple guitar riffs. But he’s also somehow the best and most underrated rock bassist of the 21st century, and it’s not even close on either front. The near total absence of guitars means there is nothing remotely like "Elephant" here. But this allows the bass to serve as every song’s melodic chassis as well as the engine and the wheels: "The Moment" actually shuffles along to the same beat as "Elephant", though it's a schaffel rather than a trunk-swinging plod, its effervescent lope and pearly synths instantly recalling "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" or even Gwen Stefani and Akon's "The Sweet Escape". "The Less I Know the Better" merges Thriller's nocturnal, hard funk with the toxic paranoia of Bad.
And make no mistake, Parker is writing pop songs here, and doing them justice. During the lead-up to Lonerism, he claimed he wrote an entire album of songs for Kylie Minogue and had to stress he wasn't joking. Perhaps appearing on one of 2015's biggest pop records inspired him. Either way, the external or internal pressure to keep his pop impulses at bay are gone.
Nearly every proper song on Currents is a revelatory statement of Parker’s range and increasing expertise as a producer, arranger, songwriter, and vocalist while maintaining the essence of Tame Impala: Parker is just as irreverent working in soul and R&B as he is with psych-rock. "Nangs" and "Gossip" function as production segues, pure displays of "How'd he do that?" synth modulation that prove Parker sees himself as a friendly rival of Jamie xx rather than someone who sees a strict DJ/"musician" binary. While the sitar-like frill on "New Person, Same Old Mistakes" has hints of shimmering Philly soul, there's also engagement with the dubby textures and repetitive melodies of purple R&B. And for good measure, there's a bridge where Parker makes a modern studio take sound like a forgotten, vinyl breakbeat and drops it mid-track like a jarring DJ transition—a trick most effectively used on Yeezus' "On Sight" and "I Am a God".
While Parker will never not sound like John Lennon, this time, he imagines a fascinating alternate history where the most famous Beatle forsakes marriage and the avant-garde for "Soul Train" and Studio 54. On Innerspeaker, Parker's melodies were effectively smudged with reverb and layering—once drawn with charcoal, now they're etched with exacto knives. As a result, the singles on Currents could be covered by anyone, and Parker has advanced to the point where he can write and sing an immaculate choral melody on "'Cause I'm a Man" and have it sound like a soul standard.
"'Cause I'm a Man" also puts Parker's personal life front and center in a new way. The chorus ("I'm a man, woman/ Don't always think before I do") finds him in league with Father John Misty's I Love You, Honeybear and My Morning Jacket's The Waterfall, taking an unsparing and often unflattering look at masculinity and romance, examining what qualifies as biological instinct and what qualifies as mere rationalization for wanting to fuck around and/or be left alone.
The emotional power of Currents comes from its willingness to accept that relationships will expose an introvert's every character defect. Parker's lopsided inventory is revealed on "Eventually", which exposes the false altruism often used to justify "it's not you, it's me." The structure of the chorus ("But I know that I'll be happier/ And I know you will, too/ Eventually") makes it plain that it's always about me first. And even if Parker honestly wishes eventual happiness for "you," he wants it to arrive on his schedule. On "The Less I Know the Better", he calls out an ex's new lover by name and plots his empty revenge (his "Heather" to her "Trevor"). By the next song ("Past Life"), Parker passes her on the street and considers giving her a call not because he cares or wants to get back together, just because he can. He fools himself into thinking a new routine of picking up dry cleaning and walking around the block, which he enumerates in a mumbled, pitched-down monologue, constitutes a new existence, but it's all part of the same continuum.
Currents could be called a "transitional album," but what Parker seems to realize is that all albums should be so named, because life is transitional. This is why "Let It Happen" leads off Currents rather than serving as its climactic laser-light show. It's a dazzling, impossibly intricate song about resisting the temptation to micromanage your life. And it may be a companion piece to "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards". Notice that Parker presciently phrased the lyric with we—whether it's about a partner, a fanbase, or just the construct of one's self, there's always the tendency to seek comfort and stability rather than dealing with the dissonance between two entities that are inevitably subject to changing at different frequencies. The kicker was even more prescient—"Every part of me says, 'go ahead'." And so Currents ends up being Parker's most convincing case for solitude yet—he knows that perfection can only be achieved inside the studio and progress is the ultimate goal outside of it.[/spoiler]
9.4 di Paste
[spoiler]Currents is a record knowledgeable music fans are supposed to be excited for, paying attention to and ready to consider the best of the year. For one reason or another, Tame Impala has become the psych-rock equivalent of Arcade Fire or Kanye West. They’re an original voice in an established aesthetic, and that’s bound to get you positive coverage for the demographics reading both Rolling Stone and Pitchfork. In the face of positivity, the more cynical of us tend to doubt. Let me come out of the closet: I’ve never been a huge Tame Impala fan. Regardless, I’m here to suggest Currents is a record you should be excited for, paying attention to and ready to consider the best of the year.
Tame Impala isn’t exactly an underdog band: Kevin Parker has enjoyed the steadily increasing accolades of the music press, “Elephant” was a huge single, they’re a bigger-font festival band, and their name is almost certainly known to anyone who has bought any overpriced flannel from Urban Outfitters. They’re hyped big-time and, to be completely honest, I never really understood why. Would I say their sound was unique and impressive? Definitely. Did I love quite a few of their songs? I’ve put “Mind Mischief” and “Desire Be Desire Go” on many a playlist, and I was as down with “Elephant” as everyone. But did I think Innerspeaker and Lonerism were standard-raising works of psychedelic genius? I wished I did, but they never took with me as they did with so many others.
Currents is where the internal debate about Tame Impala’s hyped-up legitimacy ended for me. This is a near-perfect album. It’s a superb progression from their last efforts, a study in internal consistency and just chock fucking full with nearly an hour of great songs.
Parker seems to think of Innerspeaker as little more than a nice sprint at the start of a marathon if the instrumentation here is any indication. Back when Tame Impala debuted with their EP and the aforementioned LP, the conversations being had about them seemed to all surround the guitar work. Even with Lonerism, Parker was still concerned with being a rock musician in the traditional sense. Even with the record’s forays into more expansive soundscapes, it was still a pretty guitar-obsessed album. Currents may have some of his best riffs, but they’re there to anchor everything else, predominantly what’s going on with his voice interacting with synth sounds only he would choose in an era inundated with the electronic.
From opener “Let It Happen” to closer “New Person, Same Old Mistakes,” Parker manages to never shy away from the spotlight while somehow making you view him as a mere messenger given this incredible album by the muses. There’s a lushness to every instrumental and vocal decision here of a tone smacking of eternality. It’s psychedelic music less as a genre distinction and more as a legitimate description for how much your mind seems to expand when you listen to it. There are rewards aplenty to anyone who’ll give this record many listens, but they’re the kind which will shirk away if they’re sought out. Instead, you’ve just gotta sit back and let them come.
In the past, I worried Parker was too exploratory for his own good. He seemed like a person who couched some great riffs in the midst of somewhat directionless experiments. Blasphemy, I know. With Currents, I’ve repented. Innerspeaker and Lonerism sound a lot better now given that they’re part of an upward trajectory to an eventual masterpiece. He’s been called a visionary for years, but this is the ultimate proof he can see for miles and miles.[/spoiler]
è sulle copertine di pressoché tutte le riviste, indie e commerciali. Disco dell'anno ragazzi. E anche dell'anno scorso forse.
With Currents, I’ve repented. Innerspeaker and Lonerism sound a lot better now given that they’re part of an upward trajectory to an eventual masterpiece. He’s been called a visionary for years, but this is the ultimate proof he can see for miles and miles.
[spoiler]After two Tame Impala albums that centered on Kevin Parker's withdrawal from society, he has entered the stream of life on Currents. And he's lonelier than ever. The bemused, occasionally melancholy isolation that defined Innerspeaker and Lonerism has metastasized into heartbreak, bitterness, regret—feelings that can actually kill you if left untended. This is a breakup record on a number of levels—the most obvious one being the dissolution of a romantic relationship, but also a split with the guitar as a primary instrument of expression and even the end of the notion that Tame Impala is anything besides Kevin Parker and a touring band of hired guns. Because of these shifts, the question of whether Currents is better than his first two albums is beside the point: it stands completely apart.
Parker has never minced words about his intentions, and there's a song here called "Yes I'm Changing". The music communicates even more clearly: Currents' opening salvo "Let It Happen" has barely any audible guitars and makes ingenious use of a passage where it sounds like a half-second loop is accidentally stuck on repeat. It's a despairing, open-ended psych-disco hybrid whose closest modern analog is Daft Punk's Random Access Memories—a record that cast disco, yacht rock, and dance pop as shared founts of old-school, hands-on music-making. In this sense, the album reimagines and expands Tame Impala's relationship to album rock—like Loveless or Kid A or Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, it's the result of a supernaturally talented obsessive trying to perfect music while redefining their relationship to album-oriented rock. There's more care and nuance put into the drum filtering on "Let It Happen" than most bands manage in an entire career of recording.
Currents is the result of many structural changes, most of which exchange maximalist, hallucinatory swirl for intricacy, clean lines. As we knew from "Elephant", the song that Parker sheepishly admitted "[paid] for half my house," Parker is good at writing catchy, simple guitar riffs. But he’s also somehow the best and most underrated rock bassist of the 21st century, and it’s not even close on either front. The near total absence of guitars means there is nothing remotely like "Elephant" here. But this allows the bass to serve as every song’s melodic chassis as well as the engine and the wheels: "The Moment" actually shuffles along to the same beat as "Elephant", though it's a schaffel rather than a trunk-swinging plod, its effervescent lope and pearly synths instantly recalling "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" or even Gwen Stefani and Akon's "The Sweet Escape". "The Less I Know the Better" merges Thriller's nocturnal, hard funk with the toxic paranoia of Bad.
And make no mistake, Parker is writing pop songs here, and doing them justice. During the lead-up to Lonerism, he claimed he wrote an entire album of songs for Kylie Minogue and had to stress he wasn't joking. Perhaps appearing on one of 2015's biggest pop records inspired him. Either way, the external or internal pressure to keep his pop impulses at bay are gone.
Nearly every proper song on Currents is a revelatory statement of Parker’s range and increasing expertise as a producer, arranger, songwriter, and vocalist while maintaining the essence of Tame Impala: Parker is just as irreverent working in soul and R&B as he is with psych-rock. "Nangs" and "Gossip" function as production segues, pure displays of "How'd he do that?" synth modulation that prove Parker sees himself as a friendly rival of Jamie xx rather than someone who sees a strict DJ/"musician" binary. While the sitar-like frill on "New Person, Same Old Mistakes" has hints of shimmering Philly soul, there's also engagement with the dubby textures and repetitive melodies of purple R&B. And for good measure, there's a bridge where Parker makes a modern studio take sound like a forgotten, vinyl breakbeat and drops it mid-track like a jarring DJ transition—a trick most effectively used on Yeezus' "On Sight" and "I Am a God".
While Parker will never not sound like John Lennon, this time, he imagines a fascinating alternate history where the most famous Beatle forsakes marriage and the avant-garde for "Soul Train" and Studio 54. On Innerspeaker, Parker's melodies were effectively smudged with reverb and layering—once drawn with charcoal, now they're etched with exacto knives. As a result, the singles on Currents could be covered by anyone, and Parker has advanced to the point where he can write and sing an immaculate choral melody on "'Cause I'm a Man" and have it sound like a soul standard.
"'Cause I'm a Man" also puts Parker's personal life front and center in a new way. The chorus ("I'm a man, woman/ Don't always think before I do") finds him in league with Father John Misty's I Love You, Honeybear and My Morning Jacket's The Waterfall, taking an unsparing and often unflattering look at masculinity and romance, examining what qualifies as biological instinct and what qualifies as mere rationalization for wanting to fuck around and/or be left alone.
The emotional power of Currents comes from its willingness to accept that relationships will expose an introvert's every character defect. Parker's lopsided inventory is revealed on "Eventually", which exposes the false altruism often used to justify "it's not you, it's me." The structure of the chorus ("But I know that I'll be happier/ And I know you will, too/ Eventually") makes it plain that it's always about me first. And even if Parker honestly wishes eventual happiness for "you," he wants it to arrive on his schedule. On "The Less I Know the Better", he calls out an ex's new lover by name and plots his empty revenge (his "Heather" to her "Trevor"). By the next song ("Past Life"), Parker passes her on the street and considers giving her a call not because he cares or wants to get back together, just because he can. He fools himself into thinking a new routine of picking up dry cleaning and walking around the block, which he enumerates in a mumbled, pitched-down monologue, constitutes a new existence, but it's all part of the same continuum.
Currents could be called a "transitional album," but what Parker seems to realize is that all albums should be so named, because life is transitional. This is why "Let It Happen" leads off Currents rather than serving as its climactic laser-light show. It's a dazzling, impossibly intricate song about resisting the temptation to micromanage your life. And it may be a companion piece to "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards". Notice that Parker presciently phrased the lyric with we—whether it's about a partner, a fanbase, or just the construct of one's self, there's always the tendency to seek comfort and stability rather than dealing with the dissonance between two entities that are inevitably subject to changing at different frequencies. The kicker was even more prescient—"Every part of me says, 'go ahead'." And so Currents ends up being Parker's most convincing case for solitude yet—he knows that perfection can only be achieved inside the studio and progress is the ultimate goal outside of it.[/spoiler]
9.4 di Paste
[spoiler]Currents is a record knowledgeable music fans are supposed to be excited for, paying attention to and ready to consider the best of the year. For one reason or another, Tame Impala has become the psych-rock equivalent of Arcade Fire or Kanye West. They’re an original voice in an established aesthetic, and that’s bound to get you positive coverage for the demographics reading both Rolling Stone and Pitchfork. In the face of positivity, the more cynical of us tend to doubt. Let me come out of the closet: I’ve never been a huge Tame Impala fan. Regardless, I’m here to suggest Currents is a record you should be excited for, paying attention to and ready to consider the best of the year.
Tame Impala isn’t exactly an underdog band: Kevin Parker has enjoyed the steadily increasing accolades of the music press, “Elephant” was a huge single, they’re a bigger-font festival band, and their name is almost certainly known to anyone who has bought any overpriced flannel from Urban Outfitters. They’re hyped big-time and, to be completely honest, I never really understood why. Would I say their sound was unique and impressive? Definitely. Did I love quite a few of their songs? I’ve put “Mind Mischief” and “Desire Be Desire Go” on many a playlist, and I was as down with “Elephant” as everyone. But did I think Innerspeaker and Lonerism were standard-raising works of psychedelic genius? I wished I did, but they never took with me as they did with so many others.
Currents is where the internal debate about Tame Impala’s hyped-up legitimacy ended for me. This is a near-perfect album. It’s a superb progression from their last efforts, a study in internal consistency and just chock fucking full with nearly an hour of great songs.
Parker seems to think of Innerspeaker as little more than a nice sprint at the start of a marathon if the instrumentation here is any indication. Back when Tame Impala debuted with their EP and the aforementioned LP, the conversations being had about them seemed to all surround the guitar work. Even with Lonerism, Parker was still concerned with being a rock musician in the traditional sense. Even with the record’s forays into more expansive soundscapes, it was still a pretty guitar-obsessed album. Currents may have some of his best riffs, but they’re there to anchor everything else, predominantly what’s going on with his voice interacting with synth sounds only he would choose in an era inundated with the electronic.
From opener “Let It Happen” to closer “New Person, Same Old Mistakes,” Parker manages to never shy away from the spotlight while somehow making you view him as a mere messenger given this incredible album by the muses. There’s a lushness to every instrumental and vocal decision here of a tone smacking of eternality. It’s psychedelic music less as a genre distinction and more as a legitimate description for how much your mind seems to expand when you listen to it. There are rewards aplenty to anyone who’ll give this record many listens, but they’re the kind which will shirk away if they’re sought out. Instead, you’ve just gotta sit back and let them come.
In the past, I worried Parker was too exploratory for his own good. He seemed like a person who couched some great riffs in the midst of somewhat directionless experiments. Blasphemy, I know. With Currents, I’ve repented. Innerspeaker and Lonerism sound a lot better now given that they’re part of an upward trajectory to an eventual masterpiece. He’s been called a visionary for years, but this is the ultimate proof he can see for miles and miles.[/spoiler]
è sulle copertine di pressoché tutte le riviste, indie e commerciali. Disco dell'anno ragazzi. E anche dell'anno scorso forse.
With Currents, I’ve repented. Innerspeaker and Lonerism sound a lot better now given that they’re part of an upward trajectory to an eventual masterpiece. He’s been called a visionary for years, but this is the ultimate proof he can see for miles and miles.
