‘Tame Impala’ EP anything but tame

One of my pastimes is typing an artist I enjoy into Youtube and then surfing through suggested videos on the right hand column, where radical thumbnails and enticing titles lead me to clicking on videos with top comments that read “I’m in the awesome part of Youtube again.”

In the search of music that captured my lazy feelings on a late June afternoon, my hobby led me to a song off “Tame Impala’s” 2008 eponymous EP.  My ears overtook the rest of my senses as I sat slack jawed and drooling. I was instantly sedated, surrounded by the dream inducing celestial sounds that swirled out of my speakers.   One track from the Perth, Australia based groove-rock band and that was it. I was hooked.

Modular Records, who also signed notable Aussie indie bands such as “Wolfmother” and “Pond,” pressed the EP, which is the nearly half-decade of labor from multi-instrumentalist Kevin Parker.  At first listen, the multi-tracked sound reminded me of Canadian band “Caribou,” but I could also hear some similarities and clear influences from Todd Rundgren as the album progressed.

But my mind began to wander and my outlandish theory grew much deeper as I listened on.

To best describe the EP: someone was playing Ouija through a wormhole with the alternate dimension version of The Beatles where John Lennon never hooks up with Yoko Ono.  Subsequently, the band stayed together and began recording music that doesn’t suck, but an A&R executive lost the studio acetate.  It was somehow frozen under an ice hockey rink in Montreal, and in 2008, it was defrosted and rushed to a studio where it was restored, re-mastered, and released to the adoring masses as “the lost Beatles sessions”.

Out of the six tracks, my favorite is “41 Mosquitoes Flying in Formation”, which begins bathed in the bright tones of an arpeggio that melts into over driven fuzz, layered with drums and a progressive moving bass riff, encompassing a delicious bit of psychedelia; one part desert rock and one part shoegaze.

The rest of the singles fit together nicely, without a single track being sonically unappealing.   My suggestion: pick up this EP along with the 2008 debut “Innerspeaker.”  Your stereo will thank you as you press replay and patiently wait for the release of their sophomore offering “Lonerism,” which will be available Oct. 9.