That Golden Sound

When you were 20, did you have a clue what you wanted? Kevin Parker does; more than most people twice his age, the wunderkind behind psychedelic WA fuzz-rock sensations Tame Impala knows exactly what sort of sound he wants to pull.

He wrote, recorded and produced every single note played on Impala’s brilliant, shimmering debut album, ‘Innerspeaker’, set for release later this month, and a quick chat reveals the extent of his self-belief and sheer determination to do things his way.

“I feel a lot better about the album than when we were making it, definitely,” he opens. “Now I can listen to it as a whole thing rather than just various fragments of songs. I would pay any amount of money to be able to hear it again for the first time. It’s so hard to listen to songs imagining that you’re listening to them for the first time. I’m really happy with it. You just have to go by what friends of yours think, people who’s musical opinion you trust. When you’re making it, you put all this effort into making a particular part of it really massive and big, meanwhile it might be just something that goes over everyone’s head.

“I get a massive kick when someone listens to the album and picks up on the small things you put into it - little drum fills or whatever - small things you really hope people will hear. If people listen to it and just say ‘Oh, it’s all like Cream’, then...”

When it comes to recording all the parts, Kevin explains that rather than some sense of Kim Jong-il-esque desire for omnipotent control, Tame Impala is his baby, and that the other band members each have their own creative outlets, and, more importantly, that this has been the way of it from the start.

“I don’t feel guilty, because everyone else in the band has their own recording project as well. Like, Nick and Jay have their own band that they front, and that’s their creative outlet. We all have many different bands - for example, I play in a couple of other bands that my friends are in, and in those bands, those guys are the leaders, I’m just some hired gun. Tame Impala is not by any means the most important, or the biggest, or the one that’s most talked about - it’s just another band.

“The intention is that the album will sound much more cohesive. If you want something to sound a particular way and you want someone else to play it, there’s only so much that you can communicate with them through language. If you play the bass part, and you do a little lick in one spot, then you go over and play drums over the top, then you know every single millimetre of the bass part while you’re playing drums and you can make it infinitely more interpretive on each instrument and aim for more cohesion, I guess.”

One listen to ‘Innerspeaker’ proves this theory completely - there is a cohesion at play rarely heard in the modern era; each instrument is well-placed and there is a sense of sympathy of sound rather than various creative people competing to make their individual parts stand out.

“Jay and I and Nick and Dom have an amazing musical communication - we can talk about things honestly. I think our communication’s better than it was a year ago, we’re a lot more on the same page now. The next album’s going to be a lot more collaborative, but for this one, I was more uptight and sacred about how things were going to sound, and I didn’t want any outside influence coming in and ruining it. I’m a lot more chilled out now,” he laughs.

Signed to Modular, and with the world expecting big things, Parker surprised a lot of people by going against the status quo, which suggests that the only way to go is to spend mega-bucks with a super-producer from LA. Instead, Parker’s indulgence came in the form of working with Dave Fridman (Flaming Lips) in upstate New York on the mixing of the album.

“Working with Dave was a massive learning experience. He was the only guy I would have accepted, besides myself. That was a complete fantasy, a dream. He’s a quiet guy. He’s quite normal, but when he gets behind the mixing desk, the sounds he pulls are something that a madman would be happy with.”

Tame Impala play Surfers Beer Garden Thursday May 13 and The Tivoli May 14. ‘Innerspeaker’ is out through Modular on May 21.