By Louis Addeo-Weiss
On Tuesday, May 7th, Tame Impala played Miami, Florida for the first time in their career, and Kevin and co. delivered a set that can only be described as a night of psychedelic bliss.
The time is 9:30, a sold-out crowd of about 3,000 at the Filmore of Miami Beach are full of anticipation. Before long, the lights dim, but yet, continued silence from the stage. And then, the sound of synths, a backing track from the “List of People (To Try and Forget About),” released in 2017 on the deluxe edition of Currents, the 2015 release that further propelled Tame Impala into the mainstream.
Lights begin to radiate the stage as the group makes their way to their assigned musical positions. After a subtle “alright, here we go” from Kevin Parker, the creative mastermind behind all that is Tame Impala, the group breaks into “Let it Happen,” the opening track on Currents, one that conveyed Parker’s transition from psychedelic-wiz-kid-loner to a man in transition, embracing all he once shunned in his past life.
Early Tame concerts purveyed this notion of Parker as a loner, but now, in 2019, after recently collaborating with some of music’s biggest names, from Travis Scott (“Skeletons”), Kanye West (“Violent Crimes”), and Asap Rocky (“Sundress”), Parker has fully embraced this new side of collaboration and enthusiasm, and it showed on Tuesday night.
Don’t forget, Tame Impala, musically, is still Parker’s brainchild. Since his first release, the self-titled “Tame Impala” EP in 2008, Parker has written, recorded, and produced a majority of the project’s music.
Parker, a native of Perth, Western Australia, calls on fellow Aussies Jay Watson (keyboards/synthesizer), Dominic Simper (guitar/keyboards), Cam Avery (bass), and Julian Barbagello (drums), to help translate the ideas of psychedelic rock’s lord and savior into a live setting. Watson, a multi-instrumentalist in his own right, serves as one of the founding members of Pond, a band Parker has produced since their 2012 release “Beard, Wives, and Denim,” a record which Parker added drum parts to as well.
As for the live set, Parker, his nasal falsetto a-la Revolver-John Lennon, phaser pedals, signature Rickenbacker-335, and light shows designed by himself and run by Tame Impala-associate and Pond guitarist “Shiny” Joe Ryan, made for a night the city of Miami will soon not forget.
The aforementioned “Let it Happen,” which Parker has primarily opened his shows with since 2015, was backed by a carousel of lights that would lead the audience into a state of trance and euphoria. After the song’s signature loop, Parker releases the first of three confetti storms, which swoom over the audience as Parker dishes his Rickenbacker for a Squire Fender J Mascis Jazzmaster.
For many, including myself, the group’s performance of “Let it Happen” alone was enough for a ticket that ran as high as $200, but with the great showmen they were, Tame informed us that the show must go on.
“Patience,” one of the two recently released tracks in anticipation for an eventual fourth studio album, continued the universal dance party that erupted at the outset of the show opener “Let it Happen.” Parker and co. recently performed the track on the March 31st airing of “Saturday Night Live.”
A common theme of the show was the rave-like nature of the event. For a man whose primary intentions were to seemingly recreate a world carved up by the likes of Supertramp, the Beatles, Beach Boys, and Black Sabbath, Parker’s crossover into the mainstream has largely been aided by the strong emphasis on melody present in his music.
Take, for example, “Elephant,” a song which Parker prefaces in a questioning manner to the audience, “you guys ready to take this up a notch,” shortly before bursting into a full-on psych-blues. Think Blue Cheer, the legendary San Francisco proto-metal outfit, but with modern production techniques, and the implementation of melodious keyboards. The audience, still on their feet from the outset, danced in a manner that reminds you that all of life’s problems can be forgotten about by an ass-kicking song.
And that is the universally held notion regarding the beauty of, not only Parker’s music but the vision he holds for it, and what he intends to do with it.
A Tame Impala concert, from the hypnotic light shows curated by Parker himself, or the music, is one where the hypothesis of whether love prevails is affirmed, as they serve as a gathering ground full of love, affection, and song.
Parker’s music is so, that when Harley Brown of SPIN referred to Currents, a record the publication granted a 9/10, referred to it as the purest — and most complex — a distillation of everything that makes the band such a nearly physical pleasure to listen to,” it makes sense that the performance of “The Less I Know the Better,” the single which has garnered the most crossover appeal, would cause a venue full to erupt in euphoric screams as the already iconic bassline kicked off the four-minutes of what Parker dubbed “white boy Funk.”
Renditions of “It Is Not Meant to Be,” and “Why Won’t You Make Up Your Mind?” two songs reflecting the influence of Parker’s adoration for the psychedelic-sixties, have now garnered a positive response from fans as a callback to the “Tame Impala of old.” And for a band who just recently performed to more than 100,000 at Coachella no less than a month ago, Parker and co. give their absolute-most with each of these songs, as they worked tirelessly to recreate one man’s vision.
An encore, preceded by the group walking off stage for a mere three-minutes, soon returning like we hadn’t seen them in ages, with Parker, in his quirky manner, quipping with, “sorry it took us so long to get here,” of “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards,” a song generally regarded as the consensus ‘most popular’ in the Tame Impala cannon, hit me like a flashback to the first time our elders saw the Beatles take the stage on the Ed Sullivan Show in February 1964.
But it was closer “New Person, Same Old Mistakes,” that serves as Parker’s self-reflective ode in the wake of a breakup that all can relate to, and a reminder of who Kevin will always be. Whether he’s playing to the tens of thousands on the festival circuit at Coachella and Glastonbury, or to the 3,000-or-so people in Miami Tuesday night, in an age when performers tend to not prioritize the importance of audience experience, Kevin Parker and Tame Impala, just as they are in a musical sense, defy this notion, and that’s the sign of selfishness in a industry largely lacking.
Setlist:
“Let It Happen”
– “Patience”
– “The Moment”
– “Mind Mischief”
– “Nangs”
– “Elephant”
– “Love/Paranoia”
– “The Less I Know the Better”
– “Yes I’m Changing”
– “Why Won’t You Make Up Your Mind?”
– “Eventually”
– “It Is Not Meant to Be”
– “Borderline”
– “Apocalypse Dreams”
Encore:
– “Mutant Gossip” (Intro)
– “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards”
– “New Person, Same Old Mistakes”
