(Fiction)Kevin Parker shifts further away from his psych rock roots, while pondering happiness and his continued relevanceAround the time of 2015’s Currents – the third Tame Impala album – mainman Kevin Parker described having an epiphany some time previously. Driving around
Los Angeles on magic mushrooms and cocaine, he realised just how magnificent the Bee Gees sounded, emotionally and technically. Parker is an
Australian man given to singing beatific, double-tracked harmonies in falsetto; he is also a studio nerd with a long and attentive study of psychedelia behind him. The sound of the Bee Gees on mushrooms insinuated itself into Parker’s work, culminating in a massive and deserved hit album.
Currents was an album all about transition, on which Parker disentangled himself, as gently as he could, from a relationship to begin anew. At the same time, this progenitor of the 00s revival in psychedelic rock was also outgrowing his early sound, a monomaniacal stoner guitar fuzz. Parker embraced the expansive possibilities of electronics, of the dancefloor, of popularity. The mainstream, it turned out, was in a similar headspace: riding an uptown funk renaissance, high on weird production and flirting shamelessly with soft rock.