Music
Planet Perth
text by Nick AMies
The imminent release of Tame Impala’s third album, Currents,
has many admirers of the Australian psych-rock outfit’s panoramic soundscapes panting in breathless anticipation, while the
expectancy among those who consider each new release to be
the dawning of an epochal musical age is bordering on unbridled
fervour. Refreshingly though, Kevin Parker – the man behind
the music – remains genuinely baffled by this level of adoration despite being the recipient of almost unending acclaim
ever since his bedroom project went global with the release of
2010’s Innerspeaker, Tame Impala’s expansively trippy debut.
The success of his Grammy-winning sophomore effort, 2012’s
Lonerism, only added to Parker’s sense of amused disbelief that
a college drop-out from one of Australia’s most remote cities
could become so universally lauded for delivering thrillingly
unfashionable retro-futurism to the plastic pop masses.
“We don’t dance about, we don’t play music that you can really
get down to and some of the songs go on longer than a Pink Floyd
epic so it kinda confuses me as to why people actually like it,”
Parker says with surprising honesty. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m
glad they do but we don’t really fit in with what’s supposed to be
popular. I suppose that’s part of the attraction.”
Popularity, fame and fortune were never the reasons Parker
and his cohorts and comrades began making music. Ensconced
as they were in the shabby confines of the notoriously Avant
garde Troy Terrace commune in the Daglish district of Perth
82
before destiny came calling, they revelled in the detachment
from reality where their musical experiments brought them.
Success was never the goal because no-oneno one from
Perth – and even fewer from the Troy Terrace collective of misfits and outsiders - ever expected to make it. As a result, a rich
counter-culture developed free of artistic expectations and
industry pressure.
“To be honest, none of us thought anyone outside of Perth was
going to hear our music,” says Shiny Joe Ryan, one of the original
quartet of Troy Terrace tenants alongside Parker, Nick Allbrook
(Pond) and Jay Watson (Tame Impala, Pond, GUM). “We made
it for ourselves. It’s amazing that people over the other side of
the world have heard and enjoy our music, but if none of that
had happened, I have no doubt that we’d still be making music
in one form or another and probably together still.”
“Being isolated spatially and culturally – us from the city,
Perth from Australia and Australia from the world – arms one
with an Atlas-strong sense of identity,” says Nick Allbrook,
Pond’s frontmanfront man. “Both actively and passively, originality seems to flourish in Perth’s artistic community. Without
the wider community’s acceptance, creative pursuits lack the
potential for commodification. There’s no point in preening
yourself for success because it’s just not real. It’s a fairy tale, so
you may as well just do it in whatever way you like, good or bad,
wherever you like.”