At first, Kevin Parker seemed to have emerged from another era. On Tame Impala’s earliest recordings, Parker expertly evoked the sound of soaring ‘60s psychedelic rock. He leaned into a vintage aesthetic and somehow made it feel fresh — fresher, even, than some of the more forward-thinking music that was being served up by their psychedelic peers at the time. On Tame’s 2010 debut InnerSpeaker, the Perth-area studio rat and his bandmates — this was before he started calling Tame Impala his solo project — were a traditionalist’s dream, channeling Hendrix, Blue Cheer, and the Beatles in kaleidoscopic pop songs that never forgot to rock.
