Tame Impala, InnerSpeaker
Featured Album
Psych-pop that's so sonically past-tense, it could have been recorded during the first Nixon administration
The debut album from this Australian quartet begins with pure static — a quick blast of old-fashioned white noise that could have been lifted from a fritzing TV set or a vacant radio dial. It's a sound you don't hear too often in the digital era, and a fitting intro to InnerSpeaker, an immersively fuzzy psych-pop collection that's so sonically past-tense, it could have been recorded during the first Nixon administration (you know the fun one).
Though the group's 2008 debut EP hinted at stoner-rock aspirations, InnerSpeaker finds the band more relaxed, more scopic: Tracks like "It Is Not Meant to Be" (about a lovelorn stoner) and "Alter Ego" combine vapor-trail guitar lines with drifting, half-lidded vocals. There's still some heavy riffing — the guitars on "Desire Be Desire Go" add about 20 pounds to your headphones — but the real standout here is "Runway Houses City Clouds," a seven-minute coil of proggy basslines, squalling keyboards and gauzy harmonies (imagine the Beatles, had they stayed together long enough to hear The Yes Album). In lesser hands, the rear-view verisimilitude of InnerSpeaker would amount to little more than an amusing throwback; instead, it's a beguiling mix of old tech and new ideas, a forward-thinking nostalgia trip.
