The 55-second, production-based interlude Gossip lends itself directly to Parker’s study of the sensory versus the physical, evoking the perfect anxious tension to drive the record’s unstable second half. Over the space of 51 minutes, the record traces a journey from reclusive bitterness, through affirmations of hope, into a resolution that feels clear but desolate. “The real magic of Currents, though, is in how Parker so effectively (and genuinely, for the most part) manipulates the listener’s emotions without necessarily revealing any himself.” It’s a masterpiece of psychedelia made accessible for the masses, a technique that critiques celebrated shortly after the release.Ĭurrents is “the purest - and most complex - distillation of everything that makes the band such a nearly physical pleasure to listen to,” Spin Magazine’s Harley Brown wrote back in 2015. Rather than submerging audiences in ambience, he slowly builds up our tolerance to allow himself more sonic freedom. Numbers, however, don’t accumulate the weight of what Parker created in Currents. Instead of opting for worn production, he was able to unfurl hallucinogenic enigma within clean lines. Five years on, triple j listeners even voted The Less I Know The Better the best song of the entire 2010s. It’s no surprise that the record debuted at number one on the Australian and Dutch charts, went Platinum on the ARIA charts, debuted at numbers three and four on the UK and US charts respectively, and moved 50,000 album units in its first week. While Innerspeaker and Lonerism paint solitary auras and hallucinogenic dreamscapes, Currents is a project that glistens through intricate details, inviting the audience every step of the way. It is this balance that allowed Tame Impala to cast itself into the pop sphere. Bass-driven melodies bind us to the earth, while anecdotal lyricism unfurls our protagonist’s story in addictive bounds. Eventually and The Less I Know The Better serve to ground the record, bringing the audience and Parker back into the present. Tracks such as Gossip and Past Life unleash a weather of feeling, bleeding with undercurrents of anxiety, hope, and majesty. Where Let It Happen gazed upon an unchained life from above and sung about what it saw, Nangs charts a soundtrack to the experience itself.Ĭurrents documents Parker’s own introspection a continual tussle between reality and emotion.
The album is promptly spun from the behavioural into the sensory. The record’s nearly eight-minute opening Let It Happen drives self-destructive patterns through the track’s iconic linear beat, false record jumps, rock-adjacent hooks, and dreamy vocal interludes. In pure Tame Impala fashion, each song boasts the weight of a cinematic universe.