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Tame Impala

Tame Impala's Cameron Avery Drops Psych Rock for Art Pop on 'Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams'

Music ReviewSean McHughComment

Remember how Andy Shauf kind of “came out of nowhere” with one of the best albums of 2016 (The Party)? It was beguiling, challenging, and met with rapturous acclaim. Everyone loves a dark horse (for the most part).

That being said, music most certainly is not a competition in which one artist challenges an incumbent band for some intangible trophy; It's been hammered home as being wholly subjective. Then again, it's hard to deny when there’s a debut that’s so moving, mighty, and majestic you can’t help but think it’s a cut above the rest.

Point and case – Cameron Avery and his debut solo LP, Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams.

The record is an absolute and unequivocal triumph (yes, I know – “Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”), as Avery all but abandon’s the trappings of his more publicized musical associations.

For the uninitiated, a quick Wikipedia dive will inform you of Avery’s involvements with psych dynamos Tame Impala and POND, as well as some auxiliary work with The Last Shadow Puppets, and fronting his own band, The Growl. Let’s take a moment for the fan boys to settle themselves after writhing with elation at the sumptuous smorgasbord of indie music that is Avery’s resume-to-date. But that’s neither here nor there – we’re focusing on Avery’s newest (and arguably, his finest) project, Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams.

In a word, Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams is sublime. Avery’s departure from psych rock and subsequent re-orienting toward spaghetti-western-meets-cinematic-lounge-music is a thing of beauty; It's a near master class level of seamless transition.

Where the majority of Avery’s musical projects rest soundly within the realm of neo-psychedelia, Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams is about as nebulous in genre as one could hope for. Granted, there’s a distinctive (albeit indeterminate at times) emotion to each song that serves as the thru line to the album as a whole; well, that, and Avery’s dramatic baritone. Everything else on the record seems to take its own liberties of expression, in turn making for a magnificently mercurial sounding work of art.

Take the opening pair of tracks on Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams – “A Time and Place” and “Do You Know Me By Heart” – the former of the two has a romantic lullaby feel, with Avery crooning over a smile and display amongst loaded words and passing slurs. Meanwhile, “Do You Know Me By Heart” sounds like cross between '50s/'60s era pop, a la Nancy Sinatra meets modern day lounge pop of Michael Bublé (but a thousand times better).

After flexing his pop prowess muscles, Avery sends the record in a different direction on “Dance with Me,” the would-be Nick Cave-meets-Leonard Cohen spoken singing single that toes the line between sinister and endearing. Meandering baritone guitar and horn blasts ebb and flow with each bemused line of the track – “I’m just a call away / I’m just a plane by day / if you’ll just dance with me.”

Slowly but surely, Avery begins to identify his definitive sound, somewhere between cosmic pop and the aforementioned spaghetti western. “Wasted On Fidelity” touches on "shows to stop / and pills to pop," offering Avery’s most apparent confidence in his narrative, while “Big Town Girl” commences the cementing of Avery’s pop presence. It’s a romantic swerve of cynicism and solicitude that places Jane (aka “Big Town Girl”) at the forefront of Avery’s mind and tongue.

The motifs and themes of Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams are suggestive in a way, as the majority of songs center on placing unidentified lovers on somewhat beguiled, somewhat sordid pedestals of existence, which in a way create this gritty realism to the album’s overall narrative. In a way, the songs feel familiar and extraordinary all the same, similar to a Raymond Carver story.

That being said, the heavy baritone in Avery’s voice and his guitar do conjure up imagines of Cormac McCarthy minus the blood and guts. For instance, “Disposable” takes the concept of romantic shelf life and the reality of life’s inconceivable (and mostly inevitable) shortcomings influencing relationships.

So while Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams reaches it full form somewhere in the middle of its run, the album still challenges the listener to experience the record on Avery’s terms. “Watch Me Take it Away” is a musical despot’s dream, running from aggressive avant-gardism to 60s power pop to the slightest hint of Impala-esque psych rock, only to be undermined (and ultimately, superseded) by Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams’ sublime final third.

Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams ends on a run of cinema level of “long songs,” allowing Avery to express his fullest scope of feeling and imbue his ultimate musings in their most effective fashions. There’s “An Ever Jarring Moment,” which serves as just that, following “Watch Me Take it Away,” a near tonal opposite. Then, there’s “C’est Toi,” which out of all the songs on the record, seems to have the longest half-life. In terms of versatility, “C’est Toi” is the warmest of the bunch, all the while maintaining the cynical despondency of the album as a whole. Also, its just a damn good love song.

In maintaining the beautifully mercurial nature of Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams, the album ends on the hyperbolic yarn that is “Whoever Said Gambling’s For Suckers.” Its somewhat akin to a Bowie-meets-Cave satirical expansion on the song’s namesake take on the Motorhead lyric. There’s talk of Dale the Dog Trainer and splattering cerebellum on the back wall, a desperado’s tale of bounty hunting noir. Its something wholly unique to the album and Avery’s music itself.

All in all, Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams is an intrepid album to say the least. It runs the gamut of genre and challenges any and all conceptions of what an album’s structure should look like. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that Ripe Dreams, Pipe Dreams was a total an unequivocal surprise in its sonic excellence – half because a psych rock album was expected, and secondly, the overall superiority of the record is astonishing. While we may only be a wee three months into 2017, don’t be surprised when you see Avery’s name cropping up here and there come year end list season; I know it will certainly have a place on mine.

The Top 30 Records of 2015

Music ListTransverso MediaComment
2015 year end photo.png

3. Beach House - Thank Your Lucky Stars

Thank Your Lucky Stars acts as both an extension of and pivot point for Beach House’s career as a whole. Many may want the band to actively change in a progressive way, but the band chooses to continually broaden their sound in the most familiar and microscopic ways possible instead. Perhaps one of the best integration of all five preceding albums, you hear the metronome, drums are crisper, individual instruments are audible, and Victoria Legrand’s lyrics are unexpectedly discernible at certain points. It's what works for them, and its afforded Beach House the ability to carve out a dream-pop legacy (and avoid becoming a caricature) on their own terms.

 

2. Majical Cloudz - Are You Alone?

Are You Alone? takes off where the Montreal duo’s preceding Impersonator left off; a paradox of bare-bones, minimalist soundscapes ebbing with lush depth that are somehow simultaneously tranquilizing and uplifting. Welsh’s immaculately vulnerable monologues and unflinching vocals are gently bold, and they drive their synth lullabies forward with severe care. It's Welsh at his most overbearing, and yet his tight grip is irresistible. Calculatedly organic, passionately controlled, it’s a journal reading in a dream.

 

 

1. Tame Impala - Currents

Currents is the most adventurous, interesting, and well-produced collection of songs Kevin Parker has created thus far, sitting atop Tame Impala's discography as the most mature and painstakingly crafted iteration in their twisted psych-pop world. From the lush synth tracks that bubble through the mix to his effortless, washed out vocals, every sound is rendered with the utmost care. Currents proves Parker is unable to stick with a certain sound, forever looking for new ways to evolve his ideas and push his project beyond what was expected when Innerspeaker first hit the shelves.

 

Dream Culture Discuss Origins, Influences, and Moving Forward

Music InterviewEllen WilsonComment

Up-and-coming Athens, GA group Dream Culture are coming off of their second EP, Post Habitual, on which they fine tuned their UMO and Tame Impala influenced brand of psychedelia into a refreshingly groovy sound for a small town known for their heavy hand in college rock.

Transverso sat down with Evan Leima (vocals, guitar, keyboards), Chad Andrews (drums), Billy Ross (guitar) to discus their beginnings, their record, and moving forward.

TRANSVERSO: So what is Dream Culture’s origin story?

LEIMA: I met these guys through drum line. It was my senior year, we’re all drum line people. I started hanging out with them once they got into high school and then Billy kept telling me how awesome his basement is and it took me forever to go over there but once I did I was like “Oh! The hype is real!” I was making music for a while on my own and then Billy was doing that as well. Chad lives close to Billy and he would walk over to his house. That was in the suburbs when we formed. It’s finally gotten to the point where we don’t need to practice that much anymore. When we have new material that we want to learn we’ll usually take a weekend to get down on it. But we now only particle like one a week.

What was the process of making your debut Self-Titled EP? 

ROSS: Well, we recorded it in my basement. That was the biggest space we had, so it was the most logical space.

ANDREWS: And also the coolest space.

LEIMA: There’s a really good vibe to it. But the first EP - I generally record everything by myself - I would go over to Billy’s house and we would hang out and I recorded it on this big 24 Track Tascam thing.  I would do the drum track, then bass track, then the guitar track and so on. The EP was recorded from December 2013 to like summer 2014. It actually took a while for it to come out after it was all done; we finished it in the summer but it ended up not coming out until like December 2014.

And who mixed it?

LEIMA: It was mixed by this awesome guy named Miguel Ruiz. I used to work at Buffalo’s Cafe down in Suwanee, [Georgia,] and he would come in and get wings etc. and then eventually I served him and figured out he was a regular and it turns out he was an audio engineer. I recorded the vocals with him and he mastered it. All the instrumentals on the original EP I mixed myself. Which I still to this day think that it was a terrible idea and I shouldn’t have done it. But you know, that’s how it is.

Why do you think it was terrible?

LEIMA: because I was terrible! The drums were really loud.

ROSS: The hi-hat was really loud.

LEIMA:  So yeah I kind of wish I hadn’t mixed it. I’m not unhappy with it, but I wish I didn’t mix it. But he mastered it really well! He did a good job on the vocals.

Tell us about Post Habitual.

LEIMA: Post Habitual was recorded at The Glow recording studio up in northern Athens with Jessie Mangum out. A lot of people know him because he does these awesome summer singles, the MOEKE Records Summer Singles series. So what happened, the way I hooked up with him is that I recorded a single and a B side and I went to go get the tracks mixed and mastered by him. By that time I had acknowledged that me mixing was a bad idea. So I brought those to him and we just really hit it off. I went in and we had all the same favorite bands and he said my favorite bands and he was really digging what I was doing. He said he really believed what we were doing and asked if I wanted to go record with him and I said yeah. I had some songs lying around some of the songs were like a year old.  Like "Every Day" off the EP is like a year and a half old?

ROSS: Yeah, it's really old.

LEIMA: It’s an old song. It’s funny though, because Radiohead has songs that are like 10 years old and stuff. I guess its not really old but in terms of Dream Culture’s existence its old.  There’s one song on it that I wrote while I was there. I recorded everything there and mixed and mastered there.

New Single Released June 1, 2015 Written and recorded by Evan Leima Mixed and mastered by Jesse Mangum Artwork by Paul Hwang Photo by Lauranne Teyssier

What's next for Dream Culture?

ROSS: Shows.

ANDREWS: Promotion.

LEIMA: Yeah, shows. It’s been really good. “Imperfect on Purpose” was pretty good. I'd think the original EP was kind of like an opening statement. Its been cool to have a real kind of piece of art now that people will listen to it and wouldn’t know that we are just a bunch of dumb idiot teenagers that have no idea what we are doing.  We are going to be doing a lot of shows. Obviously Dream Culture is still active and I can see some singles coming out in the next year. And Billy has his own project called Spanish Spanish and I’m going to be playing drums for him. 

Tell me about Spanish Spanish.

ROSS: It’s just my own project where I write and record all the music. So now I’m just in the process of writing and recording a lot. Not worried about anything else other than getting a lot of music down.

LEIMA: I haven’t been writing a lot of music lately because with the EP it as all written already, rather than what I’m used to where I could just record and mess around whenever I want. It was at a studio somewhere where I had to book sessions with Jessie and it was weird; I didn’t really want to start working on stuff in my studio because I wanted to focus on the EP. I really want to make something with a female vocalist and start producing for someone else’s stuff because I don’t want to oversaturate Dream Culture. I’ve been trying to collaborate with some local artists so we’ll see what happens.

You've been compared to a lot of other psychedelic artists like UMO. Talk about what influences you.

LEIMA: I’m really into this Swedish band called Dungen. I also really like Unknown Mortal Orchestra. I really like what Ruban [Nielson of UMO] is doing. I got to meet him when he came for the Urban Outfitters show [in Athens] and he signed my guitar. Super cool dude. He was just so opened to us about asking him all of these nerdy questions. And there is this French band called Moodoid. I was very lucky because when I was in Paris a couple months ago and I was only there for a weekend and that week there was a show and it was free. They are really cool. One of those crazy flamboyant bands. It’s a dude and three chicks and they all wear make-up and glitter and stuff and tuxedos.

ROSS: They’re perfect.

LEIMA: So those are probably the three main influences. When it comes to the sonics and guitar sound I was definitely going to a UMO-y vibe. As far as drums go, Jessie’s main philosophy with the mixing is he’s going for a blend of 60’s funk and Ringo mixed together. Kind of like a really compressed sound. It helps that we were all on drumline because we are so on time all of the time. There’s never been any dragging or rushing issues.

Anything else you want to add?

LEIMA: Big shout out to Jessie at The Glow.

You can catch Dream Culture, along with touring members Graham von Oehsen (keyboards) and Freeman Leverett (bass), on December 12th at the Independent Public Alehouse. 

Watch a Basketball Team Gorilla Mascot Steal Your Girl in Tame Impala's "The Less I Know the Better"

New MusicWeston PaganoComment

Seeing the girl of your dreams holding hands with some guy, or basketball team gorilla mascot, named Trevor may not be "the greatest feeling ever," but watching the new music video for Tame Impala's "The Less I Know The Better" might well be one of them.

You can't really go wrong when directed by delightful Spanish collective CANADA, who have been making some of the most brilliant music videos in recent years from El Guincho's "Bombay" to Battles' "Ice Cream," and their work with this Currents classic is no exception.

CANADA drench the Australian indie darlings' groovy bassline wallop and sultry croons in their quintessentially quirky and colorful aesthetic for a trippy and stimulating experience bound to rival preceding music video "Let It Happen" in those near-encroaching year-end lists.

This love triangle tale of man and ape is a particularly sexual and surreal short film even for them, and it's safe to say the more you watch the better.

GUM’s 'Glamorous Damage' Makes Slight Return to Tame Impala Psychedelia

Music ReviewEzra CarpenterComment

On Currents, Tame Impala did away with their nimble guitar riffs in favor of exclusively bass acoustics padded with synth melodies and drum kits, creating a divide amongst those who herald the LP as the band’s best work to date and those who are lukewarm to what they consider a mild disappointment. Consequently, Tame Impala’s reception has been more divided this year than any other. These observations are not intended to call the unanimity of the praise Currents has received into question, but to note that with any change in creative direction and the expansion of an artist’s discography, new material inevitably differentiates fans as either for or against an artist’s new sound. 

Three LPs, a significant style change, and several offshoot ventures have warranted enough material for the Tame Impala fan base to be classified in a few different ways: fans of the old, fans of the new, fans that are completely bought in, and fans devoted enough to have an opinion on every Tame Impala side project (of which there are plenty). The release of Glamorous Damage by Tame Impala multi-instrumentalist Jay Watson under the moniker GUM now furthers the criteria for die-hard Tame Impala fandom while simultaneously offering glimpses of the band’s forgone style. 

Glamorous Damage is an amalgam of synth pop (think backing tracks to establishing shots of an '80s coming of age film), stadium power pop, and electronic funk. The album is mostly an up-tempo extension of the sounds explored on Currents with the occasional semblance of Lonerism melodies. Consider “Notorious Gold,” whose synth leads and power chord accents can be best described as a Lonerism instrumental at a Currents pace. If you were wondering where Tame Impala’s signature psychedelic guitars went, Jay Watson hid them on this album. 

The instrumental production is noteworthy. Consecutive tracks “Elafonissi Blue” and “Television Sick” impress with the clarity of their layered synths, percussions, and guitar riffs. The delayed and distorted vocals on these songs are vocal highlights of the album that are, unfortunately, not replicated elsewhere. The low volume of the vocals throughout this album, in addition to the distortion and delay, are both an obvious guise for Watson’s limited vocal capabilities and an acknowledgement that Watson cannot compete with Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker as a vocalist. The underwhelming vocals make the album sound as if it were the product of the theoretical situation in which Kevin Parker dies, but Tame Impala decides to keep going in his memory. 

For an album with the word “glamor” in its title and quintessentially glam rock album art, Glamorous Damage takes glam rock as more of a light suggestion than an outright influence. Had Watson incorporated glam rock’s distinctive grit into this project, it may have avoided the decline in the instrumental appeal evident in the album’s deeper cuts and fared better at sustaining listeners’ interest. While Glamorous Damage can commandingly excite a dancefloor at its funkiest moments, its inconsistency and lackluster vocals ultimately diminish it to a forgettable experience.

Wig Out With Dream Culture’s Kaleidoscopic 'Post Habitual' EP

Music ReviewSebastian MarquezComment
Cover art by Mac Stewart

Cover art by Mac Stewart

Dream Culture are a relatively new Athens, GA purveyor of psychedelia in its most modern sense. On their odd Picasso adorned second EP, Post Habitual, they fine tune their sound and double down on their contemporary influences to create a great little slice of psychedelic pastiche.

Now, I say pastiche here because their influences shine through not unlike that Crazy Diamond we all know and love. However, it isn’t Pink Floyd they’re sounding like here, but rather Tame Impala and Unknown Mortal Orchestra. Everything from percussion style, the impressive crunch of guitar, their choice of synthesizers, and even how the vocals are mixed in bring forth elements of both the aforementioned groups’ second albums.

While this does give Dream Culture’s overall sound on this album a very derivative feeling, this is not completely to their detriment. The band plays with an earnest tenacity that can't be denied on this album, and they sound like they had a hell of a time recording this biz. Come for the kaleidoscopic grooves, stay because it’s too much fun not to.

Sample the EP with two standout tracks "Doesn't Have To Be" and "EveryDay" below. Post Habitual is out now on Moeke Records and you can buy it in full here.

Tame Impala's New "Let It Happen" Music Video is Hallucinatory Hell

New MusicWeston PaganoComment

Tame Impala's recent record Currents is a stand-out so far this year, so it's only fitting that the music video for the opening track "Let It Happen" should be equally impressive.

Directed by Grammy-nominated filmmaker David Wilson (who also directed the band's Lonerism single "Mind Mischief" back in 2012), the video shows a hallucinatory and "An Occurrence At Owl Creek Bridge"-esque journey through skies of nightmares for the hapless protagonist.

Unfortunately (though understandably), the 7:49 minute track is cut down to 4:16 for the video, though the original length is cleverly displayed on the alarm clock featured at the 1:14 mark.

You can check it out below, but with a viewing experience this exhilarating you may want to be buckled in thrice like the character himself.

Transverso's 2015 Lollapalooza Playlist

Music ListTransverso MediaComment

With Lollapalooza looming large we've compiled the 30 best tracks from the best artists you can expect to see at the festival this year. With artists from Paul McCartney to Shakey Graves, Chicago's Grant Park is the place to be this weekend, and you can prepare yourself by clicking play below or on our Spotify profile!

Relive Bonnaroo with our two playlists for that festival, take the "Music Festival Name or Type Illness Quiz" on Buzzfeed here, and if that's not enough, you can always turn on our 2015 Summer Playlist.

Tame Impala's 'Currents' is Latest Evolution in Kevin Parker's Quest for Perfection

Music ReviewGraham von OehsenComment

While it may have been impossible to predict that the same band that released Innerspeaker in 2010 would create an album like Currents in 2015, in hindsight it's not at all difficult to see how this new sound was reached. Just as Innerspeaker gave Tame Impala the psych-rock label that would be expanded upon in Lonerism, Lonerism in turn introduced the spacey synthesizers and pristine production that would take the lead in Currents. While this latest installment in frontman Kevin Parker's discography may be the most sonically different out of anything in the Tame Impala catalog, it still retains something that makes it familiar.

Most notably, Currents marks Parker’s transition to becoming the complete embodiment of Tame Impala, as he wrote, recorded, produced, performed, and mixed it entirely on his own in his home studio. Up until this point he had worked with other bandmates or at least producer and mix engineer Dave Fridmann, but Currents is his first singularly created album, and his well-documented obsessive nature shows through this in pretty much every aspect. From the lush synth tracks that bubble through the mix to his effortless, washed out vocals, every sound is rendered with the utmost care.

Though this LP builds upon the foundation laid by Tame Impala’s first two albums it certainly lives in it’s own space.  This was evident even in "Let it Happen," the first single released, as the nearly eight-minute track features synth-driven melodies, enough studio tricks to make nearly any producer’s mouth water, and, most surprisingly, barely any guitar. While other tracks on Currents do utilize more guitar, the instrument is mainly used as more of an accent rather than the focal point of each song, a stark contrast from previous staple tracks like "Elephant." Even the song "Eventually," which begins with a fuzzy guitar riff, transforms into a shimmering synth jam as it descends into the verse. 

Besides a lack of guitar, Currents is unique in part because Parker has come to embrace pop songwriting techniques. Leading up to the release of Lonerism he admitted “I really love, like, pop music now” in one of the videos shared by Modular Recordings, and he also revealed that he had written an entire album for Kylie Minogue, an Austrailian pop singer. Since then, Parker has gone on to record with American pop producer Mark Ronson and is featured on 3 tracks on Ronson’s 2015 album Uptown Special. 

Currents can’t exactly be classified as pop, but it’s probably the closest thing to pop that Tame Impala has released. Yet, after songs like the synthy ballad “Yes I’m Changing” and the sugary-sweet “The Less I Know The Better," Parker throws out a left turn in “Past Life," which features pitched down, spoken word vocals not unlike how documentary characters sound when trying to hide their identity in an interview, that ultimately pulls the album back down into an odd haze of phased out, psychedelic noise.

In terms of lyrical content, while Innerspeaker and Lonerism came from the mind of someone stuck inside their own head, Currents showcases that same voice venturing beyond introspection. It’s easy to call this record a break-up album, but Kevin Parker is very clear that it’s much more than that. He speaks largely about change - change in himself, change around him, change in other people - and how those changes shape his thoughts and emotions.  It seems like he’s been through a lot, but he’s pretty okay with letting things happen as they come.

Currents comes as two things: It is the most adventurous, interesting, and well-produced collection of songs Kevin Parker has created thus far, sitting atop of the Tame Impala discography as the most mature and painstakingly crafted iteration in their twisted psych-pop world. However, it also serves as a transition. If anything, we now know that Kevin Parker is unable to stick with a certain sound, forever looking for new ways to evolve his ideas and push his project beyond what was expected when Innerspeaker first hit the shelves. While this album is impressive in its own right, it’s definitely going to be interesting to see what comes next.