Australian psychedelic four-piece Tame Impala are one of the greatest bands in the world right now. Following the recent release of their debut album, Innerspeaker, they’ve just completed a tour of the US with MGMT and managed a quick stop-off in London before continuing on with their intensive touring schedule. It was here that we were lucky enough to grab some time with the brains behind the band, Kevin Parker.
Tom Sowerby: Now, you guys have been so busy over the last few months, particularly on the back of your American tour with MGMT.
Kevin Parker: Yeah, it’s been pretty busy but we got some time at home and it doesn’t feel like we’ve been permanently busy because when we do go home our lives go straight back to being exactly as they were before, so we just kind of swan around Perth.
TS: You guys have been popular in Australia for a while but over the last year or so you’ve got a lot bigger worldwide, were you expecting it?
KP: It’s always a surprise, but when you’re on the inside and you see everything happening, like the label doing their little ‘spiels’ and all the marketing and stuff, it’s pretty different to what you’d expect. We don’t disagree with it, they have to do what they have to do, but it’s like less mystical and mysterious when you see it as steps happening. It doesn’t feel the same as when I was following a band that got bigger and bigger, there’s so much calculation, not on our part but by the people who manage us. I never realised that it was anything more than the music. It’s romantic to think that it’s only the music that’s propelling the band, but it’s not. Like if your music is on a TV show or something it’s like a boost to your career. But we’re enjoying it, I’m grateful for the lives we have; it’s a pretty sweet deal when you think about. We complain a lot but we get to travel and when we don’t we don’t have to do anything else, just record music.
TS: Now, following some problems, I think ‘Innerspeaker’ is finally coming out here?!
KP: I don’t know! I don’t know what the hell’s happening!
TS: Well one of the things that I really liked about Innerspeaker is that if you strip down all the production quality it’s an album that could be straight from ’67 or ’68. What was your intention when you made it?
KP: Well, I wanted it to sound, sonic-wise, as though it was kind of electronic but played by real people, and that’s where the Krautrock thing comes in. Because that kind of music is incessantly repetitious and regular, but it has that hypnotic thing that electronic music has but it’s a little bit more human, I just love that idea. I’d like people to think of it as an electronic ‘60s album. I definitely was trying to find a way to join the gap between ‘60s pop and modern electronic music. But there is this big misconception that it’s a ‘band’ album, because there’s really just one track where the whole band play on it at the same time, it’s mainly just me recording. It’s always just been my bedroom recordings.
TS: So you did it all yourself?
KP: Yeah, it’s just the way I’ve always done it, it’s what I’ve been doing for years and years and slowly I’ve been getting better at it.
TS: Now, a fairly regular argument in the music industry is that labels don’t give bands enough time and interfere too much, particularly with recording albums. Were you given much creative control when you recorded Innerspeaker?
KP: The label’s really good with letting me craft the music the way we want to, so they let me record the whole thing the way I like to do it, which is good. They let me go over and mix it with the guy too, because a lot albums get mixed away from the band; it just gets put on someone’s desk and he does it and sends it back. But we feel like a large part of our music is how the sound affects the ears and how the different instruments connect with each other so it’s good that we’re allowed to have such an input.
TS: And I heard you guys built a recording studio in your tour bus?
KP: Yeah, that’s a bit of an elaborate name for it, but it’s basically my 8-track with a bunch of jacks that convert into whatever we want to plug into it. We just did excessively long highway jams and we set up a drum machine on four chords; drums aren’t the easiest thing to set up in my mobile recording studio.
TS: Is it all working towards a new album?
KP: Yeah we’ve got all the songs worked out and we’ve recorded a lot of it. We were just working on the track listing for it yesterday; I’m so excited about it I can’t even explain. Everything feels just a lot more free flowing now the first album’s done. I was a bit uptight about getting the first album done because it had to be this and that and perfect in every way, now everything has opened up, I feel like we can do whatever we want now.
TS: So what can we expect from the new album?
KP: I don’t want to say anything because it’ll give the wrong idea, but it sounds pretty different. We’re using a few more toys, some gadgets and I’ve got a better studio set up that I used to, it used to just be my bedroom and I’ve got a better idea of how to record sound now so I can whip up a sonic storm anytime that it needs doing. So yeah all I can say is that the sound of it is ten times better than the last one.
This weekend Tame Impala will be performing at Reading and Leeds festivals and plans are currently underway to arrange a UK tour, hopefully later this year.
www.myspace.com/tameimpala
Words by Tom Sowerby
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