Currents Full Album
Nerio Cintron
And make no mistake, Parker is writing pop songs here, and doing them justice. During the lead-up to Lonerism, he claimed he wrote an entire album of songs for Kylie Minogue and had to stress he wasn't joking. Perhaps appearing on one of 2015's biggest pop records inspired him. Either way, the external or internal pressure to keep his pop impulses at bay are gone.
"'Cause I'm a Man" also puts Parker's personal life front and center in a new way. The chorus ("I'm a man, woman/ Don't always think before I do") finds him in league with Father John Misty's I Love You, Honeybear and My Morning Jacket's The Waterfall, taking an unsparing and often unflattering look at masculinity and romance, examining what qualifies as biological instinct and what qualifies as mere rationalization for wanting to fuck around and/or be left alone.
The emotional power of Currents comes from its willingness to accept that relationships will expose an introvert's every character defect. Parker's lopsided inventory is revealed on "Eventually", which exposes the false altruism often used to justify "it's not you, it's me." The structure of the chorus ("But I know that I'll be happier/ And I know you will, too/ Eventually") makes it plain that it's always about me first. And even if Parker honestly wishes eventual happiness for "you," he wants it to arrive on his schedule. On "The Less I Know the Better", he calls out an ex's new lover by name and plots his empty revenge (his "Heather" to her "Trevor"). By the next song ("Past Life"), Parker passes her on the street and considers giving her a call not because he cares or wants to get back together, just because he can. He fools himself into thinking a new routine of picking up dry cleaning and walking around the block, which he enumerates in a mumbled, pitched-down monologue, constitutes a new existence, but it's all part of the same continuum.
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Currents is the third studio album by Australian musical project Tame Impala, released on 17 July 2015 by Modular Recordings. It was released by Interscope Records in the United States and by Fiction Records in the United Kingdom, while Caroline International released it in other regions. Like the project's previous two albums, Currents was written, recorded, performed, and produced by Kevin Parker. For the first time, Parker mixed the music and recorded all instruments by himself; the album featured no other collaborators.
After the release of his previous album, Lonerism (2012), Parker began work on Currents, largely recording at his home studio in Fremantle. He engrossed himself with writing and recording, and in keeping with his reputation as a musical auteur, laboured over the details of each song, ultimately causing the release date to be delayed by two months. In contrast to the psychedelic rock sound of the project's prior work, Currents marks a shift to more dance-oriented music, with more emphasis placed on synthesisers than guitars. Parker was inspired to seek a change out of desire to hear Tame Impala's music played in dance clubs and a more communal setting. Thematically, the record is about the process of personal transformation, which many critics interpreted to be the result of a romantic breakup. The album's cover art depicting vortex shedding is a visualisation of these themes.
Currents was supported by the release of the singles "Let It Happen", "'Cause I'm a Man", "Eventually" and "The Less I Know the Better". The album became the project's best charting release, debuting at number one in Australia, number three in the United Kingdom, and at number four in the United States. As of January 2023, Currents has sold over one million copies in the United States. Like its predecessors, the album received critical acclaim and appeared on various critics' lists of the best albums of 2015. At the 2015 ARIA Music Awards, Currents was awarded Best Rock Album and Album of the Year, and it also received nominations for the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album and the J Award for Australian Album of the Year.[5] In December 2021, the album was listed at number 12 in Rolling Stone Australia's list of the "200 Greatest Australian Albums of All Time",[6] and in 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Currents 382nd on its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".
Tame Impala emerged in the early 2010s as one of psychedelic rock's most prominent new acts.[7] The group, fronted by musician Kevin Parker, released two albums that received adoration from music critics: Innerspeaker (2010) and Lonerism (2012).[8] "Elephant" became an alt-rock radio hit, and was placed in several television series and commercials.[9] Parker founded the band and is typically the sole operating member in the studio.[10] In between Tame Impala releases, Parker founded the space disco band AAA Aardvark Getdown Services.[7]
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".[13][15] At some point, Parker broke up with his girlfriend, French singer-songwriter Melody Prochet, and moved from Paris back to his hometown of Perth.[15] According to Parker, "the only rule was to make an attempt to abandon the rules that I've set up in the past." This included toying with things he considered musically "cheesy" or taboo, including drum machines and various effects.[16]
Currents was recorded, produced, and mixed by Kevin Parker at his beachside home studio in Fremantle, Western Australia.[17] 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."[10] Parker likened his small setup to an aeroplane cockpit.[15] In an adjoining room, he began designing the light show that would accompany live performances of the album by using automated stage lights on stands.[8][10] 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.[18]
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."[8] 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."[16] Currents was due to be completed in January 2015, but the deadline was pushed back several times.[17] Late in the process, he became self-conscious about the honesty of his lyrics.[10] He became obsessive about minor details in the work,[11] making him unable to wholly enjoy it upon its completion. Shortly before its release, he said, "I still think this album is completely unlistenable."[19]
Currents features styles of psychedelic pop,[27] disco,[28] R&B,[29] and electropop,[30] but the album's chord progressions and rhythms are most indebted to R&B.[31] Kevin Parker listened to R&B from the 1990s during recording,[18] which he had forced himself to reject while growing up due to peer pressures. He said, "Music guys aren't allowed to be into R&B when they are teenagers because all the teenybopper kids blast that shit in their cars." As such, learning to let go of preconceptions and embracing the music felt liberating to him.[32] He had previously refrained from making his music more pop-oriented because he thought "indie-music snobs would turn their nose up at it,"[33] and he discovered that writing pure pop music was a challenge.[34] Parker attributed his openness on Currents to producer Mark Ronson, whose album Uptown Special he collaborated on.[22][32]
Many of the songs were composed over several years, both in the studio and on the road. Parker saved ideas using a voice recorder on his phone,[33] and wrote many songs on a drum machine.[35] Guitars are present in every song on Currents, but are used to accompany and answer other instruments.[31] 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."[31] The album incorporates Parker's falsetto, as well as a vocoder.[18]
The lyrical themes of Currents centre on personal transition[13] and growing older.[22] Parker's lyrics on the album are entirely autobiographical.[15] His vocals are clearer and less affected than in prior Tame Impala releases,[17] which is partially owed to him having more pride in his lyrics; he said he hoped it would be easy for listeners to understand them.[16] Parker considered the primary theme of the album to be a "deep feeling of transition in your psyche," or, in a broad sense, fully entering adulthood.[16] He began learning about the concept of the Saturn return halfway through the recording process, which explained his feelings of reflection. He said, "I was halfway through making the album when I heard about it, and it gave what I was doing a lot more meaning; suddenly things made a lot more sense."[20] Accordingly, on the album his reaction to transition is acceptance, exemplified by the opening song, "Let It Happen".[16] Parker also felt buying the home where he recorded Currents "really changed my perspective about where I saw myself, like a place that I belonged."[9]
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