Photos by James Nagel // Written by Mike Frash //
Tame Impala mastermind Kevin Parker took to the reddit AMA community format on Thursday to answer questions from the masses for an intriguing information dump.
He also linked to a new track from Currents titled “Disciples.” Listen to it now:
Parker spoke on his favorite guitar petal (surprise! it’s reverb), how he’s developed his singing voice over time, along with the evolving nature of Tame Impala’s album artwork. His current artistic inspirations include Kanye West, Tyler, The Creator and Caribou.
The big takeaway? When he was asked about people downloading and streaming music for free:
Eh…. I feel like music will be free sooner or later, and i think I’m all for it. There’s all this talk of music needing a monetary value, this ownership of music, even that it needs a physical form. But intrinsically… it’s MUSIC, it should be better than that. Some of my most important musical experiences were from a burnt CD with songs my friend downloaded for me at a terrible digital quality… I didn’t care… it changed my life all the same. For me the value of music is the value you extract from it. You want to know a story? Up until recently, from all of tame impala’s record sales outside of australia I had received…. zero dollars. Someone high up spent the money before it got to me. I may never get that money. Then Blackberry and some tequila brand or something put my song in an ad. Then I bought a house and set up a studio. I know what you’re thinking… “wait so…when I bought an album I was helping some businessman pay for his mansion on an island somewhere, and when some dude bought a mobile phone he was helping to pay an artist? WHHHYY?” I’ll tell you why, IT’S MONEY. It doesn’t always go where you want it to go. It’s like a shopping trolley with a bung wheel. As far as I’m concerned the best thing you can do for an artist is LISTEN to the music…fall in love with it…….talk about it………get it however you can get it….Let the corporations pay for. This is just my brain rambling remember, I’m sure there are holes in my theories… for example I realise not everyone’s music is suited to a mobile phone ad, and it would be lame if artists tailored their music for that purpose.
Zero dollars on record sales until recently? This is a brutally honest indictment on the music industry as a whole. Also, what a refreshing artist take on music streaming, one that doesn’t feel forced like Jack White’s recent Tidal-cross promoting proclamations that “music is sacred.”
Parker also was asked about Tame Imapla’s LP3, Currents, and if it will be “more pop based” in line with “Let It Happen” and “‘Cause I’m A Man.” He said:
Pop you say….. That’s a broad word… I’ve always thought all Tame Impala was total pop (whatever pop is these days) (I guess because I don’t hear the oceans of reverb and distortion… which can influence ones perception of the “genre” of a song no doubt…). Like I heard this full on piano ballad R&B cover of Backwards once, and I was like woah! is that my song??
There’s a lot of different stuff on the new album, It definitely has the most variation of any album I’ve done in the past.
In response, a reddit user asked “Come on man, link me that shit, I wanna hear it,” and Parker replied “youtube bro. it’s all there.”
The promotional effort is clearly gearing up, Tame Impala played Conan between Coachella appearances, and still there is no album release date on the books. It makes you wonder if Parker might drop it out of nowhere on us. Is it possible the new album is spread out all over YouTube, ready to be discovered by internet sleuths? Probably not, but that would be fun and parallel to Parker’s statement on music streaming.
The most important revelation of the day: If he weren’t a musician, Parker would be a scarf designer “Because a well designed scarf is hard to come by…”
Favorite quote: “It’s like a shopping trolley with a bung wheel.”
Another example that if the world were able to take on the Aussie “all good” vibe it would be a better place.