Forward Charge

Were you lucky enough to pick up a copy of Tame Impala's debut EP re-released on 12” red vinyl for Record Store Day over the weekend? The band's vinyl releases have been known to sell out before fans have a chance to snap one up, but Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker assures, “I think we're on top of that these days. We're a lot more kind of organised with supply and demand.” When this EP first came out, the release was mistakenly referred to as 'Antares Mira Sun' and Parker stresses, “That was back in the good old days when that was the only thing journalists had to talk about, 'cause it was one of the only things on our Wikipedia page: 'Tame Impala are a band and also there was some confusion about the title of their EP',” he laughs. “But, yeah! I mean, the people that get stuff wrong – I just don't really care enough to correct them or anything.” 

They've just performed at Coachella, but Tame Impala had “a pretty casual start to the year”, according to Parker: “We had most of January off. It's been a while since I had a good deal of free time in Perth, you know, during the real summer.” Probably the last time Tame Impala (and shared-member band, Pond) spent a considerable amount of time off on home turf would have been circa 2008, before their musical careers really took off. Back then a lot of time was spent jamming under a mulberry tree in the backyard of their share house. “Oh, yeah,” Parker recalls, “Troy Terrace. We got evicted. Well, nah, I think the landlord was selling the house or something. But, yeah, that was the end of an era when we had to leave the house.” Creativity blossomed not just under that mulberry tree but also in “other places around the house”. On the roof? “Yep, on the roof as well. We had the police called on us one day for attempting to have a jam on the roof,” Parker remembers. “It was night time and AC/DC were playing down the road. In fact, they had already finished. I wasn't actually there – we were on tour at the time – but our friend Joe [Ryan, Pond's guitarist/bassist], the ringleader of said jam, was in lots of trouble.”

Sounds like the trigger for an eviction notice. “Yeah, I think that whole place kinda spiralled out of control and it was inevitable that – I mean, I think we were good tenants,” Parker backpedals, “you know, when we had at least a week's preparation for rent inspection. It got pretty feral.” Are we talking a scene from The Young Ones? “Oh, to the tee,” he enthuses. “I mean, it was feral in the best possible way. It's like there was so much shit everywhere that, throughout the house, there's only a little path where you can walk because there's just crap either side – whether it's musical instruments or, ah, mouldy coffee cups.” When the possibility of mushrooms growing in corners of rooms is raised, Parker offers, “Right, yeah well there's another reason our lease was hanging on by a fine thread, was the presence of drugs.” Although mushrooms weren't growing freely, Parker adds: “Unfortunately we had to just keep 'em in the freezer.” 

If you've ever caught Tame Impala live, you would have noticed Parker's preference for performing barefoot. On whether he hurts himself constantly by treading on foreign objects, Parker shares, “Just stage friction burns where it's, like, wood or concrete or whatever [pauses]. Now that I think about it, all the time! [chuckles]. I've never really thought about it before. In fact, my feet have copped a battering over the last few years. You don't even really notice. Like, sometimes you sort of, you know, step on a pedal or step back quickly and then you'll step on something and you'll cut yourself, but you won't even notice until the end of the show… Needless to say, many injuries incurred.”

Parker's clearly a man with a pedal obsession and he describes his recent purchase from a Moog factory as “a fun piece of equipment”: “MF-101 Moogerfooger Low Pass filter”. “I've wanted one for a while,” he continues. “I mean, if you say the word 'Moogerfooger', it's kind of a vague description of what it sounds like.” Is it similar to the wah-wah pedal? “You're actually pretty close,” Parker encourages. “I mean, a wah-wah is a form of Low Pass filter and this one is a different type of Low Pass filter. You can make it a wah-wah, put it that way.”

Looking back on the rise of Tame Impala, Parker opines, “I definitely don't think we fit into the overnight success story category at all.” And it may surprise you to learn that that beast of a track, Elephant (which is currently all over the small screen having been synced to an advertisement for the new BlackBerry Z10 smartphone), from Tame Impala's latest longplayer Lonerism, “was one of the first songs [they] played as Tame Impala when they started playing gigs as a band”. “It actually had a completely different structure and everything,” the frontman elaborates. “There was this other section that just sounded completely different and, ah, [laughs] the song used to be called 'Blues Prog Epic'. That was just the working title, because there weren't many real lyrics. It was just kind of this totally progressive structure to the song where it was barely even a song. It just had all these different parts in it. I mean, that was just the name because we needed something to refer to it as. So we were just, 'Oh, that Blues Prog Epic one,' you know? Anyway, thankfully we got a different name.”

It's impossible not to feel “like an elephant/Shaking his big grey trunk for the hell of it” to the Todd Rundgren remix of Elephant with those already gigantic, thumping beats further emphasised. “It's pretty cool,” Parker agrees. “I mean, we were just delighted that Todd Rundgren was interacting with our music in some way.” When asked whether any other artists have reached out to Tame Impala, Parker ponders, “Ah, occasionally. Um, yeah. Yeah! [laughs] The Chemical Brothers got in touch not long ago – that was pretty amazing. Not necessarily to remix, and not necessarily for anything, but [we] just had the conversation about doing something.”

Tame Impala will be playing the following dates:

Friday 26 April - Festival Hall, Melbourne VIC 
Saturday 27 April – Maitland Showground, NSW
Sunday 28 April – University of Canberra, ACT
Thursday 2 May - Hordern Pavilion, Sydney NSW 
Saturday 4 May – Prince of Wales Showground, Bendigo, VIC
Sunday 5 May – Murray Sports Complex, Townsville Cricket Grounds, QLD
Wednesday 8 May - Convention Centre, Brisbane QLD 
Thursday 9 May - Thebarton Theatre, Adelaide SA 
Saturday 11 May – Hay Park, Bunbury WA
Saturday 18 May - Belvoir Ampitheatre, Perth WA