We'll make no secret about being rather impartial to Tame Impala at Noisey. First falling for their charms, whilst cowering from an unrelenting midday sun at the Park Stage, Glastonbury last year, the band were mistakenly introduced as, "Thame Impaler". Three young men with luxuriant heads of hair and one freaky, feral bass player preceded to blast through their debut album, ‘Innerspeaker’ and scorch the brains of everyone present.That debut album became one of the slow-burn successes of last year and it's follow up, Lonerism has just been released to the universal clatter of five stars reviews being percussively backed by some furious - and quite deserving - critical masturbation.And yet rewind to 2005 and think of poor, Wolfmother. Another group of freaked out Antipodean prog-warlords who had the psych hooks, the big hair and the keys to the heart of the sun. They even had a feature in Dazed & Confused. But the zeitgeist is a cyclical and scatty mistress, and soon her head turned to less stodgy wares as Wolfmother quickly became derided for increasingly self-indulgent 70s pap.But fast-forward to 2012, and judging by the sold out Brixton Academy crowd that greets Tame Impala like returning heroes, it seems the zeitgeist has come full circle and the appetite to bath in mescaline seeped, psychedelic grooves is back.Big watery puddles of reverb, rippling with Kevin Parker’s lithe melodies drift above the now trademark wafting, flanged guitar lines. "The Revolver" like pop-glow of new tracks, such as "Apocalypse Dreams" mesh themselves onto the rapier hooks of "Desire Be, Desire Go" and "Why Won’t You Make Your Mind?" from their debut. The band has made two stellar albums, that together, make for a near flawless 90 minute live set.Impressively, Tame Impala offer something for everyone: bearded, middle-aged men at the back tap toes appreciatively, mumbling something about Can and "hasn't Brixton come up in the world”; twenty somethings litter the main floor, politely psyche-nodding in unison, whilst reassuringly the front throng is made up of kids, going bat-shit for new heroes.And it's this adulation that sees Parker genuinely humbled, as he repeatedly thanks, "the lovely people of London". The band's live keyboardist echoes this sentiment, telling the Brixton crowd they put the rest of Europe to shame. And you know he's not joking when the gargantuan groove of, ‘Elephant’ see the venue turn into a heaving stampede of adulation.‘Elephant’ was the first new track the band put out before Lonerism’s release and in isolation sounded worryingly like a lumpy and leaden retrogressive step backwards. Yet alongside the shimmering electrical production that accompanies the rest of the new material, it bursts out of the cage with rumbling menace.The slow motion sweetness of, "It Feels Like We Only Go Backwards" and the arms aloft reaction it incites, provides a microcosmic glance into the future: Tame Impala will steamroller all summer festivals next year and be mumbling their gratitude to increasingly swollen legions of mind-blown fans.If they ever make it to Buckinghamshire, Thame will be well and truly Impaled.
Advertisement