I had an epiphany on Thursday night while witnessing the mass euphoria that was Tame Impala playing “Let It Happen” to a crowd of 20,000 young Australians. The fact that Kevin Parker’s quirky, trippy, introspective fusion of psych-rock and electronic pop has been embraced by so many is remarkable if you think about it. “Let It Happen” is actually a really weird song. It’s eight minutes long, a rambling epic that doesn’t even have a chorus (the “Let it happen” refrain comes at the end of each verse, and where the chorus should be is a plaintive passage that’s more like a bridge). The bulk of it is a long instrumental interlude made up of whirling synths, loopy stuttering breakdowns and what sounds like, of all things, a Mellotron solo. It’s not a pop song; it’s not a rock song in any conventional sense; it doesn’t do anything obvious or predictable that you would expect to shake the rafters of a huge arena.
And yet on Thursday this shaggy beast of a tune did exactly that, electrifying the massive crowd at Qudos Bank Arena in Sydney as soon as they heard that distinctive opening synth flourish — the first sound you hear on Tame Impala’s most popular album, 2015’s Currents — getting the entire place up and dancing and singing their hearts out, from the mosh pit on the floor to the highest reaches of the upper deck. It sounded huge, epochal, religious. “Let it happen! Let it happen!”
No doubt it has something to do with the sentiment in the lyrics. It may have an odd structure but “Let It Happen” is all about facing your fears and embracing change, and there’s something heroic about it. That would resonate for the twentysomethings who made up the vast majority of the crowd, especially in these uncertain times.
It also had to do with the pulsating rhythm and hypnotic layers of sound, pounding out a space exactly between rock and dance music, making the scene look and feel more like a rave than a concert. The staggeringly good light show was part of that too. It’s no surprise to me that today’s young audiences are fine with those boundaries being blurred. This can’t help but make me smile: the intersection of rave and rock has been where my heart lies ever since the Happy Mondays changed my life in 1990.
It was also the fact that we had all waited almost three years for this show. It was originally scheduled for April of 2020; I bought my tickets in January of that year, only to see it postponed by the start of the pandemic, and then postponed again multiple times after that. There was something profound and redemptive about just being there. And after that long wait, it was not a letdown.
Throughout his career, Parker has been compared to some real heavyweights, from John Lennon to Barry Gibb. From where I was sitting on Thursday night, he lives up to all that. However obsessive and weird his music is, he knows how to play to a big room — in this case, a very big room (“I mean look at this fucking place!” he exclaimed at one point). He writes melodies that are so exhilarating and unforgettable they’re like the designer drugs that adorn the tour’s artwork and merchandise. His songs are filled with drama — big buildups, bigger breakdowns, a kind of soaring psychedelic grandeur — and somehow still feel light and brisk and inventive, not heavy-handed or obvious, so that the drama feels earned. As a lead singer, bandleader and star, Parker has an easy, natural charisma. From his casual style to his laid-back stage banter, he makes young Aussies feel like he’s one of them (and from everything I’ve read, that’s exactly what he is). Tame Impala (the touring band, as distinct from Parker’s nom de disque) are fluid, fun, and tight in equal measure. Parker’s recordings, which typically take years for him to finish, stand out for their layered perfectionism; and in a live setting, the band bring out that depth and detail, even on a soundsystem this enormous (and by the way the sound was great). At the same time they aren’t afraid to let loose with squalls of guitar noise and electronic distortion, true to their psych roots. They fucking rock.
This is music that needs an arena to contain it. The phrase arena rock conjures up images of 70s dinosaurs like ELO and Boston; and I’m sure if you’re a hater, those might be the comparisons you’d reach for to dismiss Parker’s lavish 70s pastiches. But I don’t think there’s any shame there — I’m not too punk to admit those bands were great in their day. Parker would probably be chuffed by that anyway since he’s actively sought a 70s vibe on his last two albums. Arena rock is a great tradition — thousands of young people gathering in vast civic spaces to have a music experience that’s far grander than what a club can bring you, but somewhat more intimate than a festival. It’s about community and spectacle.
On Thursday night, Parker and his bandmates showed they know exactly what to do with the opportunity they’ve been handed to create such a spectacle. The Tame Impala of 2022 occupies a space in pop music that’s somewhere on a Venn diagram between Fleetwood Mac, Daft Punk and Pink Floyd. Like all those bands, they evolved from more niche, underground or experimental scenes to reach epoch-defining success — but without compromising at all. Like Floyd in particular they are especially good at bringing a jaw-dropping psychedelic experience to the biggest of stages.
As I mentioned in the essay I wrote about Currents last year, sometimes the best music can reach a lot of people. You can be weird and uncompromising and make music for the masses. I’m thinking about Radiohead or the White Stripes playing Madison Square Garden. David Bowie’s “Heroes” is a pretty strange tune itself, but despite or maybe because of this it’s one of the most iconic rock songs ever recorded.
Thursday’s concert — my first time seeing Tame Impala — wasn’t as life-changing for me as it might have if I’d been 20 and on mushrooms. And the show was not without its missteps. But still it was a fabulous experience — expertly designed to be a fabulous experience — and it made me feel good about the state of music now, and about life.
I don’t usually do big shows like this, but with the right artist I make exceptions. The last concert I saw at Qudos Bank Arena was Prince, in 2012. That was in fact possibly the best show I’ve ever seen; and I’m eternally grateful to have seen it because it was my first and last Prince show and he died four years later. (I think the venue was called Allphones Arena back then; I just call it Corporate Sponsorship Arena.)
Setting aside what I said about the beauty of arena rock, when you’re my age and by yourself, a venue like this is not that fun or comfortable. It’s a hassle to get to on public transport. The lobby looks and feels like an airport. As I ascended with the rest of the shuffling hordes to the upper tier, with its ugly, institutional-grey carpeting, fluorescent lighting and sad refreshment counters with only one kind of beer available — pissweak, barely drinkable Hahn Super Dry — I thought to myself, there has to be a better way to do this.
I was also disheartened to be almost the only one in that huge crowd wearing a face mask. Don’t get me started on “COVID normal” and the widespread, mistaken belief the pandemic is over. It’s not the fault of most of those in attendance that they’d been led to believe that; it’s an appalling systemic failure. But never mind.
As I took my seat, in the front row by a railing in the upper tier, Canberra’s Genesis Owusu was in the middle of his opening set. Owusu is great (I put his debut LP on my list of last year’s best albums), but he didn’t have his band with him, and his rapping along to backing tracks on such a big stage left me underwhelmed. When the gig was first announced in 2020, the mighty Khruangbin were the scheduled openers; it was hard not to wish it had been them instead — though I’m seeing them headline Sydney Opera House next month so I don’t have much reason to complain. (Update: Here’s my review of that Khruangbin show.) Owusu might have had more impact on the floor of the arena; I did hear a fair bit of cheering from down there.
As Tame Impala took the stage, the giant video screen behind them played a satirical pharmaceutical ad for Rushium, the fictional mind-expanding drug that’s a riff on the title of Tame Impala’s latest LP, The Slow Rush. The ad became more and more disorted and trippy as it played, bringing huge laughter and cheers from the crowd as Parker arrived onstage (the cheers becoming a roar) and the evocative synths and vocoder of “One More Year” faded in.
“One More Year” — also the opener of The Slow Rush — is one of my favorite Tame Impala tunes, and it’s been an anthem for me throughout the pandemic, with its melancholy lyrics about being stuck in a loop as the years pass. That was especially resonant now because of the long wait for this night. But, curiously, the song wasn’t grabbing me as the show opened. The reflective lyrics and the moody midtempo funk felt like a shrug, especially with the jarring, noisy contrast of the video satire just before. This was even more true of follow-up number “Borderline,” also from The Slow Rush. On record, I love the cruisy, soulful, impeccably produced yacht-rock of these tunes — Parker’s loving tribute to 70s and 80s legends like Steely Dan and the Doobie Brothers. But in the confines of Corporate Sponsorship Arena, with all these fans on the edge of their seats, framed by that mind-melting light show, they sounded just a bit flat. It might have been the headache I was already starting to feel from the shit beer, but I found myself wondering if Parker would get a bit lost in this cruisy vibe and wouldn’t manage to find another gear.
I was soon proven wrong. Next up was “Mind Mischief,” from Lonerism, which just celebrated its 10th anniversary. The considerably punchier beat and spiky guitar riffs of that one injected energy into the proceedings, and especially into Parker’s vocals, as he shifted from his Barry Gibb disco falsetto to his John Lennon yelp. The crowd responded with the first of what would be many roars of approval.
Back to The Slow Rush for the next number, but this time it was “Breathe Deeper,” one of Parker’s masterpieces, an anthemic blend of white soul and deep house — like if Daft Punk collaborated with Hall & Oates — featuring gorgeous synths and pianos and an achingly bittersweet vocal. It sounded great live, with the insistent funk pulse laid down by drummer Julien Barbagallo and bassist Cam Avery reverberating hugely in the upper tiers, thousand of heads bopping in every direction while the ground level transformed into a giant block party.
Then “Breathe Deeper”’s fantastic breakbeat-acid coda, the shimmering haze of 303 squelches far noisier than on record, sounding like the Chemical Brothers if they actually wrote good songs, taking the rave vibe into outer space.
The truly pivotal moment was “Elephant,” which came not long after, galvanizing the crowd more than ever. One of Parker’s most beloved songs, it gained even more popular appeal when the Wiggles covered it for Triple J’s Like a Version last year, ultimately winning the station’s Hottest 100 with it. Sure enough, during the keyboard solo in the middle, you could hear many in the crowd joyously chanting the Wiggles’ “Fruit Salad.” The two songs will forever be associated thanks to the (genius) interpolation in that cover; and the childlike glee of the impromptu chanting lent the evening an air of extra celebration.
The transcendence of “Let It Happen” came just after the middle of the set; and in a boss move, Parker followed that one with “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards,” another banger from Lonerism that kept the ecstatic mass singalong going. This was followed by the pumping 4/4 disco-rock of recent single “Is It True” and then “Glimmer,” which is just a straight-up house tune. By now the interplay between the clamorous psych-rock of Lonerism and the groovier, more danceable sounds of The Slow Rush was less contradictory and more like the peaks and valleys of a great DJ set.
It would be slack not to say more about the light show. If you missed the gig and heard about it from friends, you’re arguably more likely to hear about the lights than about the music. What can I tell you? It was special. Though I have a dim idea of how these kinds of big light and video shows are software-driven and digitally synched to the music, it was still almost supernatural to behold. As an old raver, I was especially fond of the lasers; and I loved the video show’s high-def nature footage, like the big waves breaking in slow motion. Most incredibly of all there was the giant mobile lighting ring, hovering over the stage like a UFO, beaming a complex array of colored lights across the arena all night. Sometimes it lowered down so it looked like it was about to abduct the band — and then at one point it seemed to do just that: the lights went out, fog enveloped the arena, the UFO flashed strobes amidst a storm of electronic noise, and when the lights came back on the band was gone.
The slow ballad “Eventually,” which formed the late climax of the set, was if possible even more sublime than “Let It Happen.” The sound of 20,000 people singing along with the chorus’s long, drawn-out “Eventualllllyyyyyyyyy” was pure joy. I swear it made me tear up with happiness. Seeing the thousands of flickering phones held up all across the darkened arena in place of cigarette lighters, it occurred to me that “Eventually” could be this generation’s “Dream On”; except Tame Impala is far more consistently great than Aerosmith ever was.
Parker is an interesting species of rockstar. I’ve often thought Tame Impala bear a lot of comparison to INXS — as an Aussie band who’ve reached worldwide success, on their own terms, with brilliant pop-rock that’s fit for a dancefloor. But Parker, as good-looking as he is, doesn’t have the overpowering sex-god presence of Michael Hutchence. He doesn’t strut or pose. He’s no Freddie Mercury or Bono or Drake. But I think it’s exactly his down-to-earth charm, like he just threw on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt after surfing all afternoon and rocked up to the venue, that makes him so easy to love. If he tried the rockstar poses it wouldn’t work. On Thursday, when he talked between songs about the first headlining gig the band played in Sydney, at the Civic Hotel in 2007, and the awe and gratitude they felt to be back here in such a big room, it was easy to think he hasn’t changed much in those 15 years. At the same time, his instincts are fit for the moment: he knows when to jump on a monitor and sing a big chorus, or run across the stage and wave to the upper deck.
True to that lowkey nature, Parker even sheepishly thanked us for allowing him to indulge himself with an extended guitar solo on “Runway Houses City Clouds” — a sprawling epic from the band’s first LP, 2010’s Innerspeaker, that sounds like if the Beatles had stayed together long enough to record prog-rock in the 70s. And it really was a bit grandiose in that arena-rock way, if not quite on the level of Jimmy Page stopping the show to play his guitar with a bow. I heard a group of fans making fun of the solo on the way to the train afterwards, and maybe they were right, maybe it was a bit of a wank. But I have to hand it to Parker for sticking to his psych roots, and getting into the deep cuts as the main part of the set reached its conclusion, when many in the crowd were probably just waiting to hear “The Less I Know the Better.”
We got exactly that with the first encore, and it was as effervescent and exuberant as you would expect. But then Parker slowed things down again and ended the evening on a melancholy note with the grand, ornate ballad “One More Hour,” neatly bookending the themes begun with “One More Year.” If you don’t have the patience for Parker’s exquisite update of the hoary soft-rock of 70s bands like Supertramp, this one might have lost you. Extravagant? Yes — but as with just about everything else Parker and his bandmates did that night, I was there for it.
Feature image photo credit: Ashley Mar for Tone Deaf
Greetings from Pennsylvania USA. In addition to Tame Impala, which Australian bands/musicians are big stars in Australia? Neil S.
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