Tame Impala - Currents (2LP) Vinyl

The third studio album by the Australian project Tame Impala, released on 17 July 2015 by Modular Recordings and issued in the United Kingdom by Fiction Records. It follows Innerspeaker (2010) and Lonerism (2012), and this European pressing spreads the thirteen tracks across two LPs in a gatefold sleeve.

Recording and Production

Currents was written, recorded, performed, produced and mixed by Kevin Parker, working largely at his beachside home studio in Fremantle, Western Australia between 2012 and 2015. It was the first Tame Impala album Parker mixed himself, and the first on which he played every instrument with no other collaborators. Recording became an obsession: he laboured over the detail of each song to the point that the release date slipped from May to July, and for one track he recorded more than a thousand partial vocal takes.

Sound

Where the project's earlier records were rooted in psychedelic rock, Currents moves towards dance oriented music, placing far more emphasis on synthesisers than on guitars. Parker was drawn to the change by a desire to hear Tame Impala played in clubs and in more communal settings. He carried over the Roland Juno-106 and Sequential Circuits Pro-One synthesisers used on Lonerism, and added a Roland JV-1080 synthesiser module and a Sequential Circuits Drumtraks for electronic drums. Thematically the record deals with personal transformation, a thread running from the seven minute opener "Let It Happen" through to "New Person, Same Old Mistakes". The album was mastered by Greg Calbi.

Artwork

The cover was created by the Kentucky based artist and musician Robert Beatty, who also produced the artwork for the album's singles. Parker based the designs on a diagram of vortex shedding he recalled while trying to visualise the record's themes, and Beatty described the brief as being built around turbulent flow, the way liquid or air moves around an object. Beatty referenced the work of Franco Grignani, Zdenek Ziegler and Karel Vaca while designing the sleeve. Photography is by Matthew C. Saville.

This Pressing

Two 12 inch records in a gatefold sleeve, each housed in its own custom printed inner sleeve, with a download coupon included. The rear cover carries the running order by side, and the labels are printed in the album's purple and yellow palette. Manufactured in the European Union under catalogue number 473067-7 and pressed at MPO.

Reception

Currents became Tame Impala's best charting release, entering at number one in Australia, number three in the United Kingdom and number four in the United States. It was awarded Best Rock Album and Album of the Year at the 2015 ARIA Music Awards, and was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album. Q made it the best album of 2015, Pitchfork placed it fifth and Spin and Mojo both placed it fourth. In December 2021 Rolling Stone Australia listed it at number 12 in its 200 Greatest Australian Albums of All Time.