No Filler Music Podcast - Ep 38: Tame Impala - InnerSpeaker

Episode Date: July 7, 2019

From bedroom side project to headlining Coachella, Kevin Parker's blend of psychedelic, space rock, and jangly Brit pop has made Tame Impala one of the most unique and highly sought-after acts to emerge out of rock music in the last decade. With Lennon-esque vocals and phase-fuzz heavy melodies, Tame Impala is arguably the most notable acts of the psychedelic resurgence of the early 10s, and as his music continues to evolve and crossover into the mainstream, Tame Impala is always taking the genre to new places and new audiences. In this episode, we explore the origins of Kevin Parker in the Perth music scene and we listen to the music of his debut album Innerspeaker. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Today we are talking about Kevin Parker, mostly known as Tame and Pala. Q, do you remember the first time you heard Tame and Pala? Because I sure do. I know exactly where I was. I wonder if we were at the same place, dude. Likely not. Okay.

So first time I heard Tame and Pala was, so this is a callback to our music blog, New Dust. Okay. And we had the one, like, successful house show where, you know, it was a New Dust presents with a local band from Austin and a band from Oklahoma that came down and played a show at a house in Denton, Texas, which is anyone that is local to that area knows that that's like a party town because it's a college town.

And Josh, our buddy Josh, who was the third member of our New Dust Crew, was playing Tame and Paula just in the speakers, like kind of in between sets. You know what I mean? And I'd never heard of him. And I thought for sure this was music from the 60s. Do you remember what song it was? I know it was for Mnors Speaker, but I don't remember what song it was. But yeah, dude, so that would have been like 2009. maybe, 2010?

So we talked about Tyco on one of our early episodes, right? I don't know if we mentioned his graphic design blog that he has called ISO50. So he does, you know, Tycho's a musician, right? So he also talks about music quite a bit on this blog that he does. And he put out a, you know, best of 2012 or something like that. best of 2010. Like he does these year-end reviews, kind of like what we used to do back in the day.

And it must have been his top albums of 2010 article because he put Interspeaker on there, and he had a clip for Lucidity, which is the song that Played Us in. So that's the first time I heard it. And I knew it was new,

you know, because it was a new record. But yeah, I mean, you have that instant, you know, call back to psychedelic rock, you know, that the Tamingpala, that sound that he has, you know. But I think the thing that stood out to me the most, and we could talk about this later, but it's his voice, you know, because he sings with almost like a John Lennon sound, you know, to his voice. And I think that's cool.

Oh, yeah, dude, I was going to bring that up, I was going to bring that up for sure. Yeah, that's the first thing I thought, like when I got into Tame Impala, if John Lennon were around today, Tame Impala would be his band, I feel like. That's how I've always described it. Like, it's just that, it's like that helter-skelter. Yeah, yeah. Beatles sound.

Sure. You know, with John Lennon as the frontman. Okay, yeah, yeah. I mean, I mean, maybe on this record, definitely. But, you know, obviously with currents and some of the new tracks he's put out, like, His sound is definitely evolving. You know, it's becoming a little bit more electronic. Yeah.

And it's his baby, you know. Yeah, and we'll talk about that because the history is kind of interesting. So let's just talk about the man himself, Mr. Kevin Parker. You know, I'm sure a lot of us when we first heard Tim and Paula assumed that it was a band, right? Because it sounds like music that a band would make, you know. but for the most part it is Kevin Parker alone in the studio writing these songs you know pretty much doing everything on the records I mean he has for this first record in particular he brought in a drummer and another guy that did you know the

bass guitar on just a few tracks not like every track but um for the most part it is all Kevin Parker. I absolutely thought that this was a collective effort kind of band. I mean, in a way, it, in a way it is in the sense that he's always toured with a band. So, so when, you know, live performances, it's always going to be, you know, four guys, you know. Right. And Kevin.

So, but is, is that, are the other members rotating out? Yeah. So, so, so Kevin Parker is from Australia. and he kind of made his rounds in this well-known music scene from Perth, which is the capital of the state of Western Australia. And apparently it's got this kind of bustling music scene. And one of the reasons, or at least this is what they say, one of the reasons that this music scene has kind of built up over time is because not a lot of bands when they tour will go to

Perth because it's kind of in this isolated area. So bands from the area have kind of, you know, it's sort of fostered this musical environment because you're not going to get a lot of big name bands to come by. And so if people want to see a show, they're going to go see a local show, you know, at a small venue. And so like it's given these, you know, gives these bands kind of a a way to get name recognition and stuff because there's not a lot of competition from touring bands and stuff. Yeah, that's really cool. But anyway, there's this collective of musicians and Kevin is one of those musicians.

And so they've kind of, you know, it's one of those things where like there's a bunch of bands that they kind of rotate in and out of. Kevin Parker has played drums for this band called Pond that came out of there. That's one of the more well-known, certainly not as well-known as Tame Impala. I've definitely heard of Pond. Have you really? Yeah. Well, they're psychedelic, so you would.

Uh-huh. Yeah. So anyway. Before there was Tame and Pala, there was this band called the D.D. Dums. And that was Kevin Parker's kind of first band that he was in. And I really hope that we're going to. going to play some D.D. D.D. D.D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. D. This guy named. D. D. K. M. K. P. P. K. P. P. R. K. K. K. K. K. K. He was on bass. And another fellow. And so, Dominic Simper. And. And so, he was. And Parker go way back.

They met when they were 13. And interestingly enough, Parker and Dom started off playing covers of Ridge Against the Machine and Corn songs. I want to hear that. Yeah. I don't know where that is or if there is any evidence of that. But anyway, so Kevin Parker is around our age. He was born in 86. And so he would have been the age when he picked up his first guitar to,

play a corn and a rage against machine cover because that's what was the big dance back then. But anyway, that's fascinating to me, right? But, you know, if you're going to learn to play guitar, rage against machine and corn are going to get your chops up pretty quickly, you know. Yeah. So in his later teens, that is when he discovered 60s and 70s psychedelic rock. And particularly Cream and Jefferson Airplane were big influences on him. So he said he loved the way that the recordings sounded from back then.

So obviously that plays into his sound, you know. Oh, yeah. So anyway, in 2005, they form him and Dom, his friend from age 13, form the DD Dumbs, and they have Luke Epstein on drums, like I mentioned. So what you're going to hear, we're going to play a song. more so than anything. I think you're going to hear more, you know, like I said, Cream was an influence on him.

You're going to hear the more sort of like bluesy, heavier kind of psychedelic sound, right? And what's interesting is his voice was more, everybody remembers Wolfmother, right? And they, you know, they put out their really well-known self-titled, album in 2006 or something like that. So this is around the same time. And Wolfmother is also from Australia. You're going to hear sort of, I feel like Kevin Parker is doing sort of the same kind of vocal work that like the guy from Wolfmother did. The more almost like Ozzy,

but not really. But you'll see you what I'm saying. It's definitely he didn't, he didn't do the linen kind of sound early on. Okay. This song is called the Serpenter. And this was Kevin Parker's first band, the D.D. D.D. D. D. D. D. Ums. Dude, I fucking love it, man. You like that? Yeah, I really like that. Yeah, I mean, you can, you can definitely hear the early 60s, like, 60s 70s, like, psych rock sound, right? But it doesn't sound like Kham and Pala. You know what I mean? No, not at all.

So, you know, the sound did start to change. So there's the DD-D-D-D-Dums, right? A lot of people phrase it as, oh, you know, D-D-D-Dums became Taman Pala. And I think most people say that because Dominic Simper, who was the bass player for D-D-Dums, shows up on inner speaker and was sort of like one of the key players that he brought in to the project early on, right? but from what I can tell, Tamanpala was just a side project that Kevin Parker did in his home studio. Because like I said, he wrote all the songs, you know. He not only did he write them, he also recorded most of the early stuff from Tama Pala, including most of the stuff that ends up on Interspeaker.

Like that's just him. But I think a lot of people try to phrase it as like Didi Dums morphed into Tame and Pala. and I don't think it's really that. I feel like it's more parts and pieces of D.D. D.D. D.D. Dams are involved in Tame and Pala, but more so, you know, as like the live band or in the studio for a few tracks here and there. What I can gather is, you know, you listen to, if you're diving into Tame and Pala for the first time, you're likely to assume that it's a collective effort. D.D. Dums is a collective effort. Tame Impala is all Kevin Parker. Yeah, that's more accurate. As far as the, the music itself, it's all Kevin Parker.

Yeah. And I don't know if I'm right here, but I'm almost positive that Currence, his latest full length, is also an album that Kevin Parker did all himself. Everything that you hear on Currence is him, recorded himself, all of that was him. Yeah, you're right. Currence is 100% Kevin Parker. And now let's see about lonerism. Because like I said, with Inner Speaker, which by the way is the album we're talking about today,

I don't think we even mentioned that. We do, we fucking, we do that. Because you know what? Guess what? The name of the album that we're covering is in the fucking title. That's true. Yeah, no, we're about it. Yeah.

Like I said, there's a small handful of tracks on Interspeaker that features, you know, a bass player or a drummer or an additional guitar in the studio. But the rest of it is Kevin Parker. On lonerism, kind of the same thing. Jay Watson, who was actually the drummer on Interspeaker, played a couple of, he did keys on a couple of tracks. and some other guy did spoken word on track 11. But for the most part, it's Kevin Parker. So again, you know, up until Currence, you know, you have a few other instruments, or a few other musicians here and there.

But when you get to Currence, which was, you know, the album where he exploded in popularity, that was purely Kevin Parker. And that's basically what Tame Impala is. It's Kevin Parker's side project. So here's a quote from Kevin. He says, Tame Impala has always been a... a solo project. It has two halves. One half is the recording side, which is very calculated and pieced together. And the other side is the live side where we take what's been recorded and

turn them into live songs. And that's kind of how he treats it. And that's, dude, let's talk about like best-kiss scenario. Like, you know how fun it must be for a singer-songwriter who, you know, puts all of this time and effort into an album just doing it all himself. And then he gets to tour the world with these like super expert musicians to like bring his music to life. Well, that's the thing. It's not even, you know, that's almost sounds like the way that like Steely Dan has always approached their albums. Not their live stuff, but their albums where it's like it's just Donald Fagan. and what's his name?

I'm blanking on it too, man. I got it, I got it, I got it, I got it. So like with Steely Dan, it's Donald Fagan and Walter Becker and then they bring in these like studio, world-class studio musicians into the studio. Yeah, yeah. It's the opposite with Tamipala with Kevin. It's Kevin in the studio and then he brings in other people on the road with him.

But it's not really, to say that they're expert musicians, because what's cool about it is it's his fellow, you know, Australian buds from Perth, you know. It's his fellow Aussies. All right. So here's one more quote here. And then I got a clip, interview clip, and then we'll play our first track from Interspeaker. So one of the live bass players that has played with Dame Apollo in the past, his name is

Nick Albrecht. And he has a quote here. He says, there were a couple of months where there was a seismic shift in Kevin's thing from the cream-influenced D.D. Dumbs era. And fairly quickly, there was the blist-out, pretty melody, psychedelic thing. And then there was a name change to Tame Impala and then a new drummer, Jay Watson, whose style was more elegant than the last drummer. So, again, it's kind of being phrased as like, there was D.D. Dum's and then he changed the name to Tame and Pala. But anyway, but, anyway, you know, all you need to know is Tame Impala is Kevin Parker. And, you know, these other players on the sidelines are just kind of there to take these songs and, you know, sort of reimagine them for the stage, which is cool, you know, because it really is you get to kind of reinvent the song in a way, you know, or at least I'm sure that's how Kevin Parker thinks of it as, you know.

Oh, yeah. Because he's just in the studio by himself working on this record, you know, and then he's able to kind breathe new life into them when he gets on stage. Yeah, and if you bring in other musicians on any level, you can kind of play with the melodies and play with the riffs and stuff. And if you're all on the same page,

you can have fun with it. Yeah, exactly. So anyway, I've got an interview clip here where Kevin is talking about kind of why he decided to come up with a name for the band instead of just going by Kevin Parker, you know, why did he decide to name this project?

My name isn't interesting. It's Kevin Parker, but, you know, there are people around in the world called, you know, names like Leonardo DiCaprio and Julian Casablancus and Sergio Pitonzo. People have such more interesting names than me. And because I'm like, you know, I can't deal with, um, uh, I get to kind of self-conscious with like my name being on it, so I just called a man. And I also thought that there would be no point in, like in Perth, the music scene in Perth, it's quite sort of band-orientated, you know, unless you're like a band with these guys, four guys, then no one's they're going to pay attention to. So I thought that I had to make a band to get anywhere.

So I love how he name drops Julian Casablanca's. Yeah. as like, you know, what an interesting name. And my name is Kevin Parker and it's so boring, you know. So anyway, I thought that was interesting how he talks about in this music scene. He even talked about Perth. You know, I'm sure he never imagined that he would be playing Coachella in 2019, right, when he started this project. So he's like, you know, hey, I'm in this music scene, the Perth music scene.

And it's band oriented, like he said. So I'm just going to come up with a name for it so that, you know, people don't ignore me. So that's kind of interesting. So anyway, he starts the solo project. He calls it Tame Impala. He records, you know, some home recordings that turn into an EP. And then, you know, they do some, they start to get recognition in the Perth music scene. And in 2008, they are signed to modular records, which was the same record label that Wolfmother was on.

And they released their first EP. One of the songs on the first EP shows up on Inner Speaker, Desire B, desire go. And that's going to be our first track from Interspeaker. So here we go. So dude, this is, I feel like this is just the perfect intro song into Tame Impala. And like, I don't know what it is about it. I don't know if it's, like, I don't know, I don't know any people.

that aren't in our generation that know about and love Tamampala. Are you saying that you don't know anybody personally who? Who are in a generation that, what is it? Baby boomers? No, Generation X is in between us and baby boomers. Yeah. So we were looking to hire someone to mow our lawn this summer because I didn't want to fucking keep doing it.

Lottie da, dude. I hopped onto Craigslist and found a guy. He looked like he was in his mid-40s. And he, well, he flaked on us, dude. He came to, he came up to my house and was like, yeah, dude, I'll more your lawn, but I'll give it a couple more houses to do before yours. And then I'll come back and I'll moir lawn. And he never fucking showed up.

I'm trying to see how are you going to tie this to Tamipa. Okay, okay, here's how I'm tying it back. So I was listening to Tame Impala pretty loudly in my house when he rang my doorbell. And he, I opened the door and he was like, hey, man, was that Queens of the Stone Age you were listening to? Oh, man. And I was like, no, you're pretty far off, dude. That was Tame of Pauela. And I was like, oh, never heard of them.

And I was like, dude. I mean, that is interesting to me because like I just said, I mean, Tameapala is now like, he's a staple for music festivals, right? But he played Coachella. And like, for the first time, I think it was the first time. I might be wrong on this, but you could watch, you could watch Coachella from YouTube on your couch. Yeah, I think that's the thing that's been happening for a few years now.

Yeah, that's probably right. But anyway, you know, I was able to, so I'm just saying like, it's not like he's obscure. Like, he's very well known, you know? Yeah, and here's the thing. Like, I know people that are in their early 20s, and I know people that are in their mid-30s, you know, that love Kevin Parker and Tame Impala. Yeah.

But here's a guy that shows up at my door and, and I'm just basing it on his looks. You're saying he looked like he should know of Tamipa? No, no, no, no. Well, yeah. Well, like, I mean, he, dude, he knows who Queens the Stone Age is. Yeah. Right? Yeah, sure.

Like, obviously he's a fan of music. And so based on appearance, he looked like. like he was in his 40s, you know, mid-40s. Hippy-looking guy, right? And he didn't know who Tame Impala was. Like, I've never heard of him. And I said, dude, if you like Quincy the Stoneys, you're going to love Tame Impala. And I told him to check out, I think I told him to check out loanerism.

Anyways, he fucking flaked on us. He never fucking showed up or called us again. I texted him sometimes. That's probably because he's been in his basement listening to this record, nonstop. Maybe Tamimpaola just blew his mind wide open and he just couldn't leave. That's what I'm saying. His parents' basement. That's probably what it was.

If you're mowing lawns in your 40s, you're probably living in home with your parents. Are you coming at it from like they sound like a band from the 60s and 70s? Therefore, people from that generation should know who they are. Kevin Parker's sound is just like the perfect. blend. It's a good bridge between. It's, it's fucking perfect, dude. Like, if you grew up in the 70s and 80s, like growing up teenager through your 20s and it was 70, you know, the 70s and 80s, like, you know, you had parents that were listening to Cream and the Beatles and, well, sure, our parents listen to that. But, you know, like, I'm just, it shocked me. And this is just, you know,

the perfect example of like an anecdotal doesn't mean anything kind of story because there's just one dude that I meant but you know the fact that he you know I opened the door and he was like oh you listen to Queens of the Stone Age I don't know I just assumed that someone who is who knows Queens of the Stone Age is a music fan and I was just shocked that he didn't know who Tame Impala was because like this is just I mean he just fucking hits every single note like it's it's just the perfect sound for people that are searching for this, this kind of music. I don't know. Yeah, I hear you. So, you know, like you just said, that sound, like the sound that you're talking about, it's psychedelic, right? Yeah, and it just feels and sounds like it's from the 60s or 70s.

in all the right ways, dude, there's nothing gimmicky about it. And we've, dude, and we've talked about that so many times with other bands and like some of our, um, what you heard segments, you know, when I was in that huge psychedelic rock kick. Right. Where it's like bands that are, they're just trying a little bit too hard, uh, to, to sound like, like to have that sound where it's, it's gimmicky and forced. Right. Like Kevin Parker just has found a way.

to just just fucking dive right into it and do it in a way that's that's new you know yeah different right I feel like with Tama Pala like the psychedelic rock had sort of a resurgence you know um back in the back in the back in the mid 2000s you know early 2010s and Tame and Pala was part of that resurgence but I feel like Taman Pala is like the most um like they they realized it in the best, better than anybody else, you know, as far as like bringing back the psychedelic rock sound, but doing it in a fresh new way, where it sounded, it sounds so authentically from that era, but it, you know, the way he evolves it, especially on currents by the time you get to currents, like it sounds completely unique, you know.

Yeah. I've actually got another interview clip to play. So, there's a, there's a clip. where he kind of talks about their sound. So play that one. I love things that are kind of decided, that are kind of quite lo-fi. Lo-fi, you know, being what kind of

60s and 70s music sounded like because of their equipment. But these days, yeah, the idea of lo-fi is just music that's kind of like the frequency bandwidth is like crusty. It's like, it sounds more like a boulder. And so it sounds more like a, you know, a blob. organism of sound rather than like this really kind of high fidelity thing. For me, to make something sound really groovy, it's got to be like clustered together and like, so you know, like I love things that are lo-fi. And using bad quality digital equipment

gets you the same thing. A lot of the drum sounds that we use on the album is literally a digital piece of equipment that's just like overloading. So there you go. Interesting, right? So, you know, I talked about, like, in his late teens, he discovered, you know, cream and Jefferson Airplane. And he loved the way that those recordings sounded. And so he's trying to recreate that, you know, but in the modern era. And he talked about just he loves the way that those more kind of gritty, lo-fi recordings sound because it has more, it sounds like he's saying that it has more,

it has more like life to it you know and i i would agree with that it doesn't sound super polished and like he said high fidelity it sounds like it's it's got a lot of uh you know fuzz to it you know yeah and let me just say just because you know we like to try to reference other episodes and artists that we've covered um i feel like scott hanson you know with his with his music under tycho i feel like he was able to to do that really well on the like electronic downtipo side of things to you know to have this like nostalgic uh like yeah lofi sound well he talked about that yeah and like in purposely using outdated and old equipment you know and synthesizers and even like going forward after like getting

popular and and you know selling lots of records just keeping a certain sound by purposely using outdated equipment right you know like it's it's great it there is something special about about that that sound and it almost plays into what we talked about with hypnagogic pop you know yeah i don't know if the same can be applied to the psychedelic 60s resurgence sound but it kind of is the same thing where you're like this longing for like analog. I don't know if we talk about this on the podcast, but you remember I've mentioned that I watched this documentary about typewriters. Yes.

And now people are sort of, there's this segment of people that sort of are longing for more like a relationship with like mechanical things again, you know? And so these typewriters are getting sort of a comeback in a way for people that just want to have something like physical instead of everything being on a computer hard drive somewhere, you know. Yeah. Dude, I totally get it.

And I don't want to sound, you know, like a fucking millennial. But like, because we're like a pretty large age range. But I totally get it, man. And we're like the last generation, at least our age group in this generation to remember how, you know, life before the internet. you know right yeah yeah it's just a longing for for that analog uh you know lifestyle before we were all interconnected yeah so it sounds like that's what kevin parker is trying to do with his music uh if you're a guitar player um i think you'll you'll probably kind of pick up on on sort of the effects that he uses um but you know you can get that that sound quite a bit from just using you know

like a phaser pedal and like a fuzz pedal, and delay and reverb and whatnot. But he talks about how he uses, how he, like, you know, everybody has a distortion pedal and a reverb pedal. Like, those are basic guitar pedals that everyone has, right? But what he's saying is like, you know, a reverb is meant to,

this is a quote from Kevin Parker. He says a reverb is meant to make it sound like it's in a cathedral or something. You know, in a distortion pedal, obviously adds more fuzz to it, right? He says if you put it the other way around, so in other words, put the reverb first and then the distortion. So like the way that you chain your effects will change the way it sounds, you know?

If you plug your guitar into a reverb first and then into a distortion, it's going to sound differently than if you do it the other way around. He's saying if you do it the other way around, it won't sound like a guitar being played in a church. It'll sound like a church being stuffed inside a shoebox and then exploded. So he says you can do, yeah, he says you can do different things by treating things differently.

So basically, you know, he uses the same kind of effect pedals that everybody else would use. He just experiments with them and sort of, you know, chains them as in like a chain. That's what you do. You chain effect pedals together. He chains them in a different way to get a slightly different sound, you know. And that's probably how he gets that lo-fi sound by just kind of doing stuff like this. So, yeah, that's really cool. just do something slightly different, you know?

And it's, you know, it's just, it's just Kevin Parker in his studio for hours on end, you know, experimenting and doing all of these things. So anyway, I think that track, Desire Be, Desire Go also showcases the John Lennon thing pretty perfectly, the way he sings. He's even harmonizing with himself at some point. But yeah, no, let's talk about that just a little bit before we go into our next song, dude. like what what we mean by the John Lennon sound i mean i don't know if it's obvious but it's like that

like John Lennon has this like whispery voice you know like it's it's it's kind of high-pitched and it's always just kind of it just has a quiet sound to it like think of like you know imagine or um yeah strawberry fields forever you know where it's just like, I don't know, a breathy kind of vibe to it. I don't know how else to describe it. I have a quote about him talking about this in particular. So he says, the Beatles way of singing vocal lines often crept into the recordings because they are so unique. Whereas the elements we take from those other bands are usually common among a few other bands that we listen to.

So I think what he's trying to say is like, you know, part of what makes them. unique. Part of what makes him unique is that he is mixing in the Beatles' way of singing into the psychedelic rock sounds, you know, because, you know, the Beatles weren't psychedelic for the most part. I mean, they had a couple

tracks here and there that, that sort of flirted with that. Yeah, and that's why I like, I like to say that, you know, well, I guess saying that Tame Impala is what John Lennon will be doing now is not even like, that means nothing, dude. Yeah, I don't know if you're just a pretentious, you know, music fan. But like, I guess you could say that, you know, if John Linden was more into the, like, psychedelic side of rock and roll, this would be his band, you know.

Yeah, I mean, it's just one of those questions that what I would do to know, what kind of music would the four dudes from the Beatles, what would they be making if they came out today, you know? And would they have had as much success? But the funny thing is, like, you can't even have that conversation because music wouldn't be what it is today if it weren't for the Beatles. Yeah. So. And I feel like this is very timely because have you heard about the movie that just came out? Yeah, I haven't seen it yet, but I definitely want to go see it.

Me neither. Yeah. Because it poses that exact question, you know. Yeah, if the Beatles are never around. Yeah. So let's play our next track here. This is called Alter Ego. So that, dude, that is straight up John Lennon, man.

Yeah, the way he sings, yeah, for sure. But like, you know, I wish we could... The music itself, though, like, yes, he sounds like John Lennon when he sings, right? But like the music, like this, there's something just so like sweeping, you know, about this, this, you know, it's like a minute-long intro before he says anything, you know? Yeah. Like, he does a really great job. I don't know. I don't know what to say.

I don't know how to say it. Oh, well, I mean, and that's in every album that he's released, man. Yeah. There's just so many instances of that and fucking lonerism and currents. God, there's just so many great songs that he's conjured up in his mind, man. Yeah, and, you know, he's definitely, from what I've read and like from the interviews and stuff, Like, he is a perfectionist, which is the only way that it could work when you're alone in a studio, you know, and he even says that, like, when I'm alone in my studio, like, it's just me and I can, I can, you know, layer my voice, you know, hundreds of times if I wanted to, or a guitar line, like just, you know, layer it and layer it and layer it and then just make it perfect, whereas as soon as I bring in somebody else to the studio, like, you know, the idea starts to change a little bit. And he says that in a negative way.

As in like he wants full control, you know, over these songs. And like, you can't argue with the results, right? Right. But he talked about how he will not bring in a band to jam on a song and rehearse a song for a live performance until the song is fully written and fully recorded. So, like, he doesn't want any sort of outside influence on the song. That alone, yeah. No, that alone says a lot about him.

The obvious, like, artist that comes to mind is Julian, right? Julian Casablanca and the strokes. Yeah. I mean, you have to have a certain kind of personality type to be that way, right? Yeah. Well, you know, it's even... Go ahead. I was going to say, it's even funny, like, one of the names of the tracks on this album is called Solitude is Bliss.

I mean... I love that song, really. It's one of my favorites. No, that's one of the singles, so we won't be playing it. but I love that song dude yeah the lyrics in that man it's called solitude is bliss you know he's talking

yeah there's a number of things basically basically that song is my idea of a party is just hanging out by myself yeah I mean man as an introvert I can certainly relate to that totally dude I'm with you

twin brother yeah right anyway but yeah I think you know we can make some assumptions here and say that he's probably talking about his, I mean, think about it, he's writing these songs

in a studio by himself. I don't think the word solitude is bliss is going to be written down unless he's referring to his own situation there, you know. There's a party in my head and no one is invited. There you go. All right, so I've got one more song, and this is a song that I think we should let play out. Okay. Because he does some really interesting stuff to it. And I think of all the tracks on Inner Speaker, this one sounds the most like the sound that he had with the DD Dumbs.

This one is called... The Bold Arrow of Time? The song is called The Bold Arrow of Time. I mean, if that doesn't sound like it was straight out of the late 60s, you know. it sounds so much like sunshine of your love like parts of it are almost like straight up sunshine of your love you know yeah totally and just that solo in the middle just with the with the with the with the wand and the fuzz man it's just and at the very end man mary like it's just his voice yeah yeah doing the the line yeah that's yeah it's something something special about that one dude

it's just that um that wall of sound you know like it's like every single instrument is just up against a wall, like, as loud as it can be, you know? Yeah, exactly. So, um, this is, this is one of the, the few tracks on the record that, uh, feature Dom Simper on bass and Jay Watson on drums in the studio, like on the recording. Uh, so this was a, a band effort. Um, now, I don't know if they were brought in after and like added their tracks to it later. But also, like Desire B, Desire Go, which I said was featured on his EP, which means it was

written a couple years earlier. This song was also an earlier written song. It didn't show up on any record prior to this, but that could be part of the reason that it has that cream sound, because that was his sound when he was in the DD-Dums, you know? So this is kind of one of their earlier songs. Do you know if these guys, you know, the bass player and drummer, do you know if they toured with him

or showed up in any of the other albums after this? Yeah, Jay Watson provided the piano tracks on a couple of songs on Lonarism. Cool. But I don't know about his, brand new material because, you know, he's released a couple of singles after Currance this year, actually.

But like I said, Currence was nothing but Kevin Parker for the entire record. But anyway, you know, these are the guys that went on tour with them, Dom St. Berger and Jay Watson, and he had, you know, another bass player, I think, or another guitar player that went on tour with them. But anyway, I think that's a good good idea

it gives you a good idea of sort of like the um just all the parts to Tamaama Polly you know absolutely yeah uh this is one of those examples of

where you know the the debut album is just like the the perfect um like display of what of what an artist can bring to the table and all they do is just build from that, you know? Like even with currents, there's, there's moments in

currents that go all the way back to inner speaker. Yeah. Yeah, he definitely builds on like his sound and I think currents is sort of like he, you know, he's, there's just something special about currents. Like I feel like we need to do an episode on that one. Um, because he, he achieved something on currents just like incredible, you know. Dude, I mean, that album tells a story. Yeah, like the lyrics, the, yeah, it's just, it's like, you know, I don't know, it's almost a concept album or something, you know. Absolutely, yeah, we should definitely cover that.

Cool. So that's it, man. That's it. Yeah, it was great. I'm glad we got to fucking cover this album. Yeah, yeah. I say, you know, we could play another D.D.D.D. song for the outro.

I've got another one. Actually, dude, I already had a song. Are you got an outro? All right, what did you got? So I was, I don't know if we're going to cover lonerism as a full-length episode. So I wanted to play a song from lonerism. One of my favorite Tame Impala songs. That's great, you know, because if we're going to talk about currents down the line, this will give us a flavor of lonerism, which is the album that came out after Interspeaker.

Yeah, and a little in between, which in this album came out a couple years after Interspeaker. So yeah, that's it for this week. And we don't have a sidetrack in mind for Tam Impala. So we'll figure it out in the meantime. So as always, we've got a website. And Travis, I know you like it when I fucking give you a nudge. It's a beauty. Hop on our website.

Dude, there's all sorts of bugs on that site. So, you know, every time you say that. It just makes me think of all the bugs I got to fix on that thing. No one knows that, no one knows that but you, okay? Yeah, until you click on one of the tags and it takes you to a blank page. This has been behind the scenes with Q&T. Q and T. Our, yeah, our outro segment where we talk about shit that no one needs to know about.

Oh, man, whatever. You know what? You're always working on it to make it better. And God damn it, I hope people are hopping on our website, dude. because I know it's a labor of love, because we don't need a flashy website, but we have one, and it's a beauty. And I hope people are taking advantage of it

because we have a lot of great information on our website, and I'm going to plug it right now. Hop on our website, no-fillerpodcast.com. We got show notes for every single episode, including the sidetracks, where you can dive a little bit deeper into our show notes, basically. will link to every source that we pull information from. So, you know, if you want to know a little bit more about the album that we covered,

you can find us, you can find, you can find so much more information on our website, including links to videos and interviews and all that fun stuff. And you can find us on SoundCloud. you can stream every single episode of ours on SoundCloud. It's soundcloud.com slash no-filler podcast, right? Or is it just no-filler? It's no-filler podcast.com. No, no, no, I'm talking about our SoundCloud.

Oh, the SoundCloud is also no-filler. No-filler music podcast. We don't know, dude. I'm looking at it right now, dude. Are you serious? No, it's just no-filler podcast, bro. Oh, you mean the URL. Yeah.

Yeah, soundclad.com slash no filler podcast. Same as the website, nofiller podcast.com. And you can find us on Twitter. Nope, you can't because we don't do that shit. Yeah. That is the sound that every millennial is making because we're not on Twitter. Oh, I was like, that was not me screaming. That was me.

It was like a taunt, you know, like, ooh, no. Don't put that in there. No, it's fine. I'll figure it out. All right. So for our outro, we're going to play us out with track 8 on my favorite Tame Impala record, dude. I wish that you felt the same way. We're going to play a song from his 2012 release, Lonerism.

This song is called Keep on Lion. And I'm just going to play a good chunk of it, dude. until then my name is Quentin my name is Travis we'll shout at you next week with one of the best savings rates in America banking with Capital One is the easiest decision

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