Tame Impala @ Turner Hall Ballroom 3/3/13

Music is truly a universal art form that can and should be appreciated by people of all ages and walks of life.  Never was that more true than looking around at the capacity crowd at the Turner Hall Ballroom on a chilly Sunday evening to see Perth, Australia's dream pop indie darlings, Tame Impala, perform a headlining show.  From the first note of their opening jam, "Desire Be Desire Go," you could see a sea of head bobbing happiness from people of all ages.  In attendance were everyone from former students, now seniors in high school, to college students wearing college hats and sweatshirts, to a couple who looked just shy of my parents' age who were to my right and held hands and swayed during the whole set, to mid-thirties folks like myself (rocking Brewers gear, by the way :) ), to mustachioed hipsters, to long-haired folks who looked like Kevin Parker, the lead singer and songwriter from the band, to ladies on girls' nights out, to everything else in between... literally.

So, what makes Tame Impala's music so appealing to such a diverse crowd?  My thinking is that it's the right blend of a lot of styles that come together to form a unique and truly enjoyable sonic landscape. Imagine what would happen if you were able to attend a collaborative jam session with  Pink Floyd (Dark Side of the Moon era), the Flaming Lips (Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots era), the Stone Roses, and My Morning Jacket.  The result of that musical conglomeration would be about as close of a description as I can come up with in defining Tame Impala's overall sound.

The band's near 90 minute set drew mostly from songs from their two full-length albums, 2010's Innerspeaker, and last year's Lonerism, (which was one of my favorite albums of the year).  "Endors Toi," the first track off of Lonerism, was featured early in the set and elicited a classic spacey jam.  Moreover, a show highlight, "Elephant," the single off of Lonerism frequently played on 88.9 Radio Milwaukee, featured a tripped out blues guitar riff coupled with dynamic percussion, and even a homage to circus-sounding instrumentals during a pause in the tune.

Another truly engaging factor of this concert were the fantastic visuals which often corresponded, literally note-for-note, to what either the guitarist, bassist, drummer or keyboardist was playing.  The visuals were so good, that one could argue that the lighting engineer was just an integral part of the band as the musicians themselves (just like you'd see at a My Morning Jacket or Phish show).

Tame Impala certainly melded all of their influences throughout the concert.  The jam from "Mind Mischief" demonstrates their ability to incorporate aspects of shoe gaze, pop-rock, and no-psychadelica all at the same time.


My highlight overall of this concert was oddly a tune that I had only heard on YouTube called, "Half Full Glass of Wine" featured on the band's first EP released in 2008.  This tune begins a lot like My Morning Jacket's "One Big Holiday" and features a strong jam from each of the musicians, resulting at the end with a deafening crescendo featuring all five musicians (and the visual effects) at their finest.


Opening for Tame Impala was The Growl, fellow band mates form Perth, AU.  The Growl featured two drummers (one of whom literally used a tin garbage can for part of his rig), a guitarist, a keyboardist, an upright bass player, and a singer who channeled what Jim Morrison would have looked like as a western Australian.  This act was very solid as well, and did best when they stuck to tunes with more traditional blues structure, which lent themselves to the added electronic loops and effects the band put on their set.

Grade: A+



photo by Stephen Bloch