Innerspeaker

Good things happening for Aussie label Modular this year (remember Jonathan Boulet toward the end of last, start anticipating an Avalanches record in 2010), kicking off with the four-piece psych cadets Tame Impala and their Innerspeaker LP. Think wafting, kaleidoscopic harmonies and flangey guitar parts one step to the left of Dungen, here in “Runway, Houses, City, Clouds” a totally narcotic mesh of busy drums, stoner riffs and tempo shifts best appreciated after four-foot bong hits. So yeah, druggy, and pretty great. Tame Impala are Kevin Parker, Dom Simper and Jay Watson. Kevin and Dom have been musical companions for a good 9 years, having met at music class in high school at age 13, sometime after Kevin had began honing his primitive self recording skills as a way of putting tune to his newly learned drum beats. They found Jay sometime last year in rural Western Australia and admired his groovebrain and corresponding wrist movement. By stroke of luck he was moving to Perth with another band and this allowed them to jam. The Tame Impala sound is one equally informed by The Beatles as it is beat poetry, by Turkish prog as it is by Turkish delight, and by English folk as much as homeless folk, and it’s a breathe of fresh air that reeks of all of these at times and none at others