Review Summary: Nostalgia for the nightclubs.
It's a shame that Kevin Parker has gone to such lengths to develop his latent electronica flourishes on
Currents, because the effort is going to go largely unnoticed between trite comparisons with Damo Suzuki, Jamie xx, and George Harrison. There's nothing lazier than similes, and to write off the crux of Parker's growth- incorporating prevailing elements of dance music into the flagging reputation of rock music- as sounding like anyone else makes for uninspired criticism. With that in mind, it feels necessary to state the obvious:
Currents no longer holds Tame Impala close to their influences, leaping into the unknown and testing the limits of their supposed rock revivalist boundaries.
Parker's made headlong flight from
Lonerism's classic rock tropes, opting instead for hypnotic rhythms best demonstrated on lead single "'Cause I'm a Man". It's perhaps telling that "Daffodils", a nostalgic stomper helmed by Mark Ronson on
Uptown Special, is most indicative of
Currents' movement towards danceable beats and funky synths. Aside from "Let it Happen", a monolithic krautrock number to satisfy the rockists (still however largely devoid of guitar riffs), most of
Currents dispenses with psychedelic melodies and grooves and replaces them with pulsating, danceable beats recalling mid-'70s AM radio. The lack of guitars means that the glorious glam stomp of "Elephant" is all but forgotten among the throbbing beats of "Eventually" and "The Less I Know the Better", where lurching bass grooves overtake and let the moodiness of the evening setting sink in. It's testament to the presence of subtle pop numbers like "The Moment" and "Yes, I'm Changing" that the lack of guitar goes almost unnoticed under such insatiably infectious vocal hooks. The truth of the material is that these songs rarely go amiss without guitars to accompany them:
Currents is at once looser, tighter, and better with the overbearing presence of guitars replaced with layer after layer of summery production sheen.
Tireless abstracts and discussions over
Currents' genesis will become its undoing. Kevin Parker has evolved Tame Impala's nostalgic meditations to encompass the wider arena of discos and nightclubs. Put succinctly,
Currents is groovy, funky, and ultimately, danceable; really, that's more than any lousy Lennon and McCartney comparison could ever say.
