Tame Impala
Innerspeaker

LA RECENSIONE

"Summer Discs"

For years I hated the summer: the scorching heat, the sea in front but the first decent beach 20 minutes by car/scooter, the psychophysical impossibility of approaching any action or even thought that goes beyond primary impulses (sleeping, eating, shitting, normally), the apathy fueled by chronic laziness, those vile creatures called mosquitoes. Things I still can barely tolerate, honestly, but which conceal wonderful sides: going around almost naked (an impulse that – thanks to the feminist struggles of the '70s – is shared and taken to extremes by female creatures), the coolness of the evening, the nights spent playing records for a few unfortunate souls who think there's only "dance music" (but I am interested in minds, not bodies), accepting resignedly (or supinely) one's congenital apathy.

And over time I also started to associate certain music with summer, and certain summers with specific albums/songs. The summer that has just ended was unexpectedly branded,  by the warm sound of Tame Impala. Unexpectedly because last year's self-titled EP, which preceded "Innerspeaker", left me quite perplexed. Too perfectly vintage in sounds, between Blue Cheer and Cream - the cusp between garage and hard rock of the 1968/69 biennium,- to be able to stand out. Yes, essentially the usual "lack of personality."

But the three young Australians (average age around 20) have seen the light, reworking their sound, cloaking it in a subtle psychedelic aura, supported by the singer Kevin Parker's astonishingly Lennon-like voice and a remarkable knack for never clichéd arrangements. A journey in phaser mode starting from the psychedelic vein akin to Revolver in "Is Not Meant To Be" and "Jeremy’s Storm", then ranging through the aforementioned proto hard rock residues ("Desire Be Desire Go", the canonically blues "Expectation"), but always seasoned with acidic spices, passing through tributes to the less known English freakbeat among Move, Elmer Gantry’s Velvet Opera, Tomorrow, Skip Bifferty and company, inexplicably short-circuited with memories of early 80s pop (such a strange effect is caused by the beautiful "Solitude Is Bliss", "Why Won’t You Make Up Your Mind" and "Alter Ego", the latter almost reaching near-dance landscapes).

It's impossible not to mention also more properly psychedelic excursions, as in the repetitive and crystalline guitar riff of "Island Walking" or in the long journey "The Bold Arrow Of Time."

An album with monstrous additive capabilities, born from a 360° vision of today's psychedelia married to an enviable "pop" writing. Chapeau!