SLoW MOTION
Tame Impala’s majestic new album The Slow Rush sees Kevin Parker absorbing sounds and production techniques from everything available to him. Despite becoming a festival headliner, he tells John Earls he still isn’t fully happy with what he’s achieved in the past decade
INTERVIEW TAME IMPALA
When Kevin Parker began planning the shows for Tame Impala’s new album, The Slow Rush, he looked into the cost of buying lasers. He’d heard Rihanna had bought the ones used on her last tour, and Tame Impala is a festival headliner now - his show closing the Other Stage at Glastonbury last year was one of the most talked about sets, and that was before he’d even finished The Slow Rush.
“I kept telling my production manager I wanted to buy lasers, but I was told it’s not a good idea,” laughs Parker, sat upright and attentive on his bed at his hotel suite in the middle of Piccadilly Circus. “Lasers constantly get upgraded and, if I bought wholesale lasers, next year there’s going to be something even cooler I’d want. But it wouldn’t make sense to hire them, because what would I do with the lasers I’ve bought? Plus, the lenses degrade and we don’t know how to repair them.”
It’s a story that says much about Tame Impala’s current status: if Parker’s not quite a Rihanna-status megastar, he’s potentially in the market for lasers now. And it shows he is always thinking about how to bolster Tame Impala’s spectacular shows. “Every time we headline a festival, I think ‘Woah! Fuck! Really?’ It’s an honour,” he insists, seemingly not being disingenuous at the status of his recording alias. “I just hope I’m the headliner I’ve been booked to be. When we started, I loved that we didn’t have to put on a headline show. We could just rock out and, if we played shit, it didn’t matter - we were just some band on the middle of the bill. It’s not suck it and see now: we’re the headline show. But that’s a massive opportunity, and I’m learning how to embrace that role. I try not to think of the pressure and just have fun with it.”
Despite the musical growth from the winning stoner rock of 2010 debut album Innerspeaker to the fluid melodies on Lonerism two years later, it wasn’t until third album Currents in 2015 that Tame Impala’s shows matched the spectacle of the music. “I decided to grow up and stop being afraid of the people who have come to see me,” admits Parker.