Currents (album)

Tame Impala emerged in the early 2010s as one of psychedelic rock's most prominent new acts. The group, fronted by musician Kevin Parker, released two albums that received adoration from music critics: Innerspeaker (2010) and Lonerism (2012). Parker founded the band and is typically the sole operating member in the studio. The idea to compile his songs into an album came when he had between 10–20 songs ready. The album's change in style has root in several events. Parker began to feel that even songs outside the psychedelic genre could possess its qualities; he made this assumption while under the influence of psychedelic mushrooms and cocaine and listening to the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive". At some point, Parker broke up with his girlfriend, French singer-songwriter Melody Prochet, and moved from Paris back to his hometown of Perth. inspired the album's title and some of its lyrical content. The album title Currents references the abandoned South Fremantle Power Station, where Parker found inspiration during the writing process for the album. He recalled, "A lot of the songs on Currents have passages that were directly inspired by the power house and doing laps of it. It is scary and confronting, but such a beautiful thing." Parker also wrote many of the album's lyrics on nearby beaches, including Fremantle's South Beach. "There are many things that seep into your music and one of them is where you live", he later said. "I suddenly remembered the value of being somewhere serene and beautiful and getting inspired in that way." == Recording and production ==

Currents was recorded, produced, and mixed by Kevin Parker at his beachside home studio in Fremantle, Western Australia. The two-room studio contained a minimal amount of equipment: "a ramshackle drum kit, a guitar covered in duct tape and some battered vintage synths." He hoped to deviate from the creative process by which he created Lonerism, which he described as torturous, but ultimately found himself "falling down completely the same hole again" on Currents. Recording the album soon became an obsession to Parker, as he worked "all day, every day," growing increasingly isolated. He said, "At some point, life outside the studio fades into the distance. That's how I know that I'm into it." He reasoned that any alternate approach would imply that the music was not powerful enough. He also often went swimming during breaks, which he dubbed "the ultimate purifier." Parker recorded dozens of vocals takes; according to him, for one song, he performed over 1,056 partial vocal takes. The JV-1080 was used to record orchestral strings and brass sounds as well as choirs and chimes, and the album was recorded in Ableton Live with analogue summing equipment to add colour to the stereo bus. On "The Less I Know the Better" Parker used a Roland GR-55 guitar synth to record "every sound on the first two minutes of the song" using just a guitar with a MIDI pickup and his laptop. The decision to exert control in every aspect of production aside from mastering came from obsession. He said, "I felt like, this way the album is even more my heart and soul, my blood, sweat, and tears." Parker set a deadline to complete the record because of his tendency to procrastinate; he described having a deadline as "a blessing in disguise because it forces you to make decisions there and then. Which in the end makes for good art." making him unable to wholly enjoy it upon its completion. Shortly before its release, he said, "I still think this album is completely unlistenable." == Composition ==

Music Currents features styles of psychedelic pop, disco, R&B, and electropop, but the album's chord progressions and rhythms are most indebted to R&B. and he discovered that writing pure pop music was a challenge. Parker attributed his openness on Currents to producer Mark Ronson, whose album Uptown Special he collaborated on. Guitars are present in every song on Currents, but are used to accompany and answer other instruments. This was partially due to his gear being inaccessible: "We'd finish one tour in say, Europe, go home for two weeks, and all our gear, including my guitars and pedals, would be on their way to South America." He had a larger array of synthesizers at his home studio, which allowed them to become the prominent instrument. He said, "It's really just whatever is sitting around when I think of the song." and growing older. Parker downplayed the notion that the album was entirely aimed at former lovers, however, For Parker, the album meant "looking forward and a sudden adoption of confidence." "Yes I'm Changing" is a song Parker claims he does not remember making: "A weird experience, because it was like it was someone else made the song. I had no memory of imagining it." Parker conceded that he "can't really deny" it is a breakup song. It consists of Tame Impala's instrumental, extended to a length of 6 minutes and 35 seconds, with Rihanna's vocal replacing Parker's. == Release ==

The album's promotional cycle began when lead single "Let It Happen" was released as a free download on 10 March 2015. One day later, Parker was in New York for a mastering session with engineer Greg Calbi. In the interim, three more singles were released: "'Cause I'm a Man" and "Disciples" in April during a Reddit AMA, and "Eventually" in May. Due to the album's delay, Chris DeVille of Stereogum noted that "about a third of the record [had] gone public already" by the time it was released. In October 2017, a "collector's edition" of Currents was announced. The release includes three B-sides and two remixes, and was released on 17 November. == Packaging ==

The cover art for Currents and its accompanying singles was created by Kentucky-based artist and musician Robert Beatty. Parker has said Currents designs are based on a diagram of vortex shedding he remembered while trying to visualise the album's themes. Beatty described how Parker's ideas for the album artwork "were all based on turbulent flow, the way liquid or air flows around objects." == Critical reception ==

Currents received widespread acclaim from music critics. On Metacritic, the album holds an average critic score of 84, based on 38 critics, indicating "universal acclaim". Spins Harley Brown called it "the purest – and most complex – distillation of everything that makes the band such a nearly physical pleasure to listen to". Brown added, "The real magic of Currents, though, is in how Parker so effectively (and genuinely, for the most part) manipulates the listener's emotions without necessarily revealing any himself." Alex Denney of NME praised Parker for his musical transition, writing, "Fuzzed-out guitars simply aren't where Parker's head is at now, which strikes us as a fair trade-off from a producer pushing at the outer reaches of his talent." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian wrote "A lot of the album's power and strangeness comes from the way [the lyrics] cut against the lusciousness of the arrangements... and the loveliness of the melodies." He praised Parker for creating psychedelia by leaving the listener "simultaneously baffled and intrigued", rather than resorting to clichéd psychedelic music effects. Darren Levin of Rolling Stone Australia said "the first thing that really strikes you about Currents is how hi-fi it actually is", and that after listening to the opening track, "you really do get the feeling you're watching one of rock's most restlessly creative minds at work". He concluded his review, "For someone who once sang 'Feels like we only go backwards', moving forward seems like Kevin Parker's only preoccupation right now." Levin was one of many reviewers to compare the album to Daft Punk's 2013 record Random Access Memories. Jon Pareles of The New York Times said that like their first two albums, "The core of Tame Impala is its aura of solitude". He called Currents "a tour de force for the songwriter and his gizmos. But it's also decidedly hermetic, nearly airless." Andy Gill of The Independent said, "while copious application of phasing offers a link to Tame Impala's psychedelic roots, the absence of guitar wig-outs may disappoint some fans". Accolades Currents appeared on several critics' lists of the best albums of 2015. Q named Currents the year's top album, saying that "Parker added dancefloor pop to their kaleidoscopic sound" while calling it "sonically advanced and filled with great songs". Spin ranked it as the year's fourth-best, calling it the group's "best because its soul actually lies in Motown". The magazine said the album finds Parker "coming to the epiphany that no amount of pitch- and time-shifting will screw with your perception of reality as much as a lyric that's as direct and true as 'They say people never change but that's bullshit / They do.'" Mojo also ranked the record as fourth-best of the year. Pitchfork ranked the album as the year's fifth-best, saying, "There's still a bit of Parker's elegant guitar here, but he's mostly rerouted his perfectionistic craftsmanship to synthesizer tones and drum programming." Paste ranked Currents at number eight on its list of the year's best albums, calling it a "near-perfect album" and "a superb progression from their last efforts, a study in internal consistency." Rolling Stone placed the album at number 13 on its list of the "50 Best Albums of 2015", writing that Parker's "musical rethink... is expansive, resulting in wide-screen adventures like 'Let It Happen'" and that the record is "full of weightless vocals and synthesized funk, for a set that's both blissed-out and mournful, like a set of diary entries from an astronaut floating off into oblivion". The album was also ranked fifth-best of the year by Consequence of Sound and NME, 15th-best by Stereogum, and 22nd-best by PopMatters, while Exclaim! named it the eighth-best pop/rock album of the year. At the 2015 ARIA Music Awards, Currents was awarded Best Rock Album and Album of the Year, and "Let It Happen" was nominated for Best Pop Release. At the same event, Parker won for Engineer of the Year and Producer of the Year for his work on Currents, and Tame Impala were named Best Group. The album was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album at the 58th Annual Grammy Awards. In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Currents 382nd on its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". In 2023, writer Andrew McMillen of The Australian included the album in a list of albums that he considers "flawless" from recent decades. He wrote that Parker "let go of his classic rock roots to explore alternative dance and electronica, and the results were spectacular". == Commercial performance ==

Currents debuted at number one in Australia, the group's first album to top the charts in their native country. It debuted at number three in the United Kingdom, becoming Tame Impala's first top-ten album in the country. In the United States, the album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200, moving 50,000 "equivalent album units" in its first week, 45,000 of which were sales; it was the group's first top-ten entry on the chart. The record debuted well on other Billboard charts, entering the Alternative Albums chart and Vinyl Albums chart at number one, and the Top Rock Albums chart at number two; first-week sales of vinyl copies in the US totaled 14,000, the highest for any album in a single week in the US since Jack White's Lazaretto more than a year prior. In September 2015, the UK's Official Charts Company announced the creation of a new monthly chart called the Official Progressive Albums Chart, and that Currents would be its first number-one album. == Track listing ==

Tame Impala • Kevin Parker – songwriting, performance, production, recording, mixing, cover concept Technical • Rob Grant – additional recording, mix advice • Greg Calbi – mastering Artwork • Robert Beatty – artwork and design • Matthew C. Saville – photography == Charts ==

Weekly charts Year-end charts == Certifications and sales==