TV Girl - "Who Really Cares" (2016)

 

Continuing on with the Primavera line-up, another artist I've gone back to a few times is TV Girl. The band are fairly high up on the poster and have a couple of songs with over a billion streams on Spotify, so I'm surprised that I haven't really heard anything about them before. From their Wikipedia page, they're Californian and blew up on bandcamp, and still to this day entirely independent. Not much else on them is readily available. I've listened to a couple of their records, and this is the one that has those big streaming songs - and therefore the one I've pain the most attention to.

Who Really Cares is best described as an indie pop record that draws from a lot of 90's alternative scenes, a bit of neo-psychedelia, a bit of alt dance, a bit of trip hop and electronica. What results is a very light and summery sounding album that's very easy on the ears when I've had it on in the background while working or out on a walk in the sunshine. However, when listening to it with a bit more attention in order to talk about it here, the cracks have really started to show for me.

While the genres that TV Girl are calling back to are all ones that I'm a big fan off, they don't really do all that much with these styles other than the surface level basics, making the whole aesthetic of the album feel rather derivative and half baked. I don't think this would be quite as notable if it was a crop of really well written and engaging songs, but the tunes are really just not there. The songwriting is pretty basic and very much relying on the tropes of the genres being called back to to give them some personality that wouldn't be there otherwise. I think what has really soured my opinion of the record was paying more attention to the lyrics. They basically read as a shitty guy being bitter and jealous of an ex. There's no story or interesting angle here, and the whole thing comes off pretty immature and just rubs me wrong way.

The songs I like the most on the record are the ones that lean into the looser and dancier neo-psych and alt dance genres. Opener Taking What's Not Yours is build around a jazzy horn sample and a breakbeat loop, and features some of the better lyrics on the record about the stuff left behind at an ex partners place after a breakup, with a reference to an unread copy Gravity's Rainbow to highlight the protagonists pretentiousness. (Do The) Act Like You've Never Met Me has a textbook jangly baggy/Madchester groove that I can find myself getting into (even if it is the most by the numbers version of it possible). The layered up synths, gentle breakbeat and warbly sampled background vocals sound straight out of an Ibiza chillout room.

Who Really Cares is an album of diminishing returns. On first listen when not paying to much attention, I liked the dreamy and chilled out vibe. On the second, I noticed the stylistic derivativeness. On my most recent listens while writing this, I've grown tired of the unimaginative songwriting and the boring and kind of shitty lyrical content. Maybe TV Girls stuff will hit a little more after a few pints in the sun, but on tape it really struggles to make an impression.

Top Tracks: Taking What's Not Yours

4/10

Gorillaz - "The Mountain" (2026)

Gorillaz' post hiatus records have been a bit hit and miss, with the project feeling like it lacked a consistent direction from album to album. Humanz stuck out like a sore thumb with its darker, more drab atmosphere on first release. And while musically it has aged better than I ever thought it would, lyrically it sounds so dated with it's core conceit of "what if Trump won the 2016 election" when we've had a decade of the man dominating the news cycle. It is also too long and a complete mess, jumping from style to style with no cohesion between tracks. The Now Now was a sort of half course correct, being are more stripped back, simpler album with less features and a more consistent vibe. There's some good songs on there, but as a whole it is a fairly forgettable release from the band that drew comparisons to 2010's The Fall (a somewhat throwaway side album that Damon Recorded on his Ipad while on tour for Plastic Beach).

Song Machine was a complete change of pace, with Damon and Jamie eschewing the traditional album rollout for a series of 'episodes' comprised of a standalone track built around the style and skillset of the song's feature. This resulted in the best crop of Gorillaz songs since Plastic Beach, but removed any of the broader themes and imagery the project is known for. A season 2 was in the works, but for some reason was scrapped in favour of a more traditional record, Cracker Island, that leaned back into the cartoon band's 'lore' for the first time in a while, but really didn't do much with it's occult theme and is honestly the most tired and by the numbers Gorillaz album yet.

The Mountain, is once again another switch in direction for the band, with the first rumblings of the record a couple of years ago claiming that it would be a spiritual sequel to Plastic Beach. And in some ways it very much is. The record is a big, ornate sounding album that is start studded with features, and has some core themes that run throughout without being too restrictive to date the album. But The Mountain is very much its own beast, with two distinct factors that really make it stand out from the previous Gorillaz cannon. The first is that, following on from a couple of trips to India that Jamie and Damon took, the record features a notable influence from traditional and contemporary Indian music genres - which is something entirely new to the band. The second is that the record features a core theme on death and the afterlife (inspired by both Damon and Jamie losing their fathers in the run up to recording), and such Damon has decided to dig the Gorillaz archives for recordings from previous collaborators who have since passed themselves. These posthumous features are all very tastefully included and to someone not in the know, would just feel like they were recorded for the album and not repurposed from sessions from decades past.

The record opens up similarly to Plastic Beach with a big ornate, orchestral intro. However in the place of the swooning strings of the Sinfonia Viva Orchestra is an ensemble of Indian and Indian-origin musicians playing a piece in the style of traditional Indian classical music. What results is quite an eery and mysterious opening to the record which leads into the next track, The Moon Cave, perfectly. The core of the The Moon Cave is textbook modern Gorillaz: dreamy, whimsical synthpop with a few extra elements thrown in to spice things up. The sitars and flutes continue on from the title track, and are meshed with the hazy synths and a beat switch up and hip-hop verse from Black Thought and the late Dave Joliceour of De La Soul. The track is pretty low-key, but has massively grown on me since release with the dreamy atmosphere and themes around going to 'the moon cave' as a sort of place to metaphorically wash yourself in the water there and let go of the past to make a fresh start.

The next song on the record, The Happy Dictator featuring Sparks, was released as the lead single and is the first of several that deal in the record's other major theme - that of power, control, autocrats and false prophets. Inspired by how Sapamurat Niyazov, the dictator of Turkmenistan from the dissolution of the USSR to his death in 2006, banned bad news in the country as a form of control over his subjects. The track plays into Sparks typical zaniness and pairs it with synthy Gorillaz sound, and because of that very much felt like a Song Machine off-cut on first listen. It certainly works well within the albums context, but I wouldn't say it is the strongest Gorillaz single out there. The God of Lying, featuring Joe Talbot of IDLES, falls into similar territory for me. The Track is built around a dubby off-kilter rhythm that feels like a softer Clint Eastwood, but lacks the punch and genuine weirdness that made the song stand out so vividly 25 years ago. Talbot is also doing his more dejected 'arty' approach to the vocals that has characterised the more recent IDLES records, but its a style I just don't think off he pulls off in much of an interesting way. His strength was always in the rage and fury of the early IDLES records, not this much more wordy, 'tasteful' approach. The song is by no means bad, but taken in isolation outside of the album just feels like an echo of previous Gorillaz highs.

The Hardest Thing and Orange County are a pair of songs that sit together between The Happy Dictator and The God of Lying, and follow more in the line of The Moon Cave revolving around coming to terms with grief and loss. They are a sombre and melancholic duo, with The Hardest Thing essentially serving as a triumphant woodwind and trumpet intro to the more poppy and uptempo Orange County. The songs are direct in their message about letting go of a mentor figure and the worries about living up to their legacy, and very much hit the spot - they feel very end credits-y. As the middle of the record approaches, the two themes start to meld together with The Empty Dream Machine, where Damon as 2D sings about the struggle to come to terms with grief and the desire to look for external solutions to the pain. The song has subtle Indian influences but is one of those moody, slightly autotuned R&B cuts that are always my least favourite on a Gorillaz album. It's fine but does nothing for me.

It's only when we get to The Manifesto that I feel like the album is doing something truly new for a Gorillaz record. The song is a seven minute, multipart banger that initially fuses Indian pop with Latin Rap courtesy of guest rapper Trueno, but then half way through flips on its lid into a hardcore hip-hop beat and a posthumous verse from D-12's Proof recorded when he was stranded in London with Damon in London in the wake of 9/11. The verse does feel slightly shoehorned in to fit the albums themes, but you can really feel the rage and fury in Proof's vocals that it doesn't really matter to me. The song then flips back into dramatic, dancey final section to close it out. The only song that goes nearly as hard as The Manifesto is Damascus, featuring Omar Souleyman and Yasiin Bay (aka Mos Def). The song is built off demos from the Plastic Beach era, and with the Yasiin Bay feature it really feels like Sweepstakes part 2. I really like the song and the Arabian influence is really cool, but the way it builds and builds to a frenzied climax is one for one Sweepstakes. I can say the same thing about Delirium, featuring Mark E. Smith. Mark's vocals are clearly taken from the Glitter Freeze sessions, resulting in the song following its lead. I'm fine with that, as Glitter Freeze is a really unique song and more of that is welcome - but I wouldn't say it's something new and ground-breaking for the group.

To continue with the Plastic Beach comparisons, my only real complaint with that record is that the final leg feels a little drawn out (despite there not really being any one song to single out as weaker than the rest), and I feel the same about The Mountain. The Shadowy light is a synth-driven doo-wap ballad about accepting that everything and everyone comes to an end at some point, and features some of the most prominent Indian language vocals on the record by Asha Bholse, but the overall tune I can take or leave. Similarly Casablanca and The Sweet Prince are dreamy, dreary synthpop tunes that breeze by this point in the tracklist (the album is over an hour long, so the fact that it slows down in the final leg really stands out). Luckily The Mountain ends pretty strongly with The Sad God, which really wraps up the albums themes in a nice little bow, being from the perspective of a benign god looking down at the world and lamenting in all the man made horrors that we as a species have created. It musically calls back to the title track making the whole experience feel very complete. It might actually be the best closer to a Gorillaz record thus far (Pirate Jet is a better song, but feels more like a coda than a closer to me).

The Mountain is a bit of a mountain of a record, but I'm enjoying that for the first time since Plastic Beach, there is more to engage with on a conceptual level. It's not some era defining staple that Demon Days and Plastic Beach have become, but it's certainly a lot more interesting than most of Gorillaz' post-hiatus work. It does feel like it's living slightly in the shadow of Plastic Beach especially (with how much it clearly draws from those sessions and collaborators), and there aren't really any songs (bar The Manifesto) that show their strengths when taken out of the album context. It's almost the inverse of Song Machine. That record is pretty much all bangers but I very rarely listen to it as a full album because there's no cohesive theme or throughline. Whereas The Mountain really works as an album, but not as a collection of songs in isolation. I'm intrigued where Damon and Jamie go next with the project, because they certainly seem more invigorated with this record in interviews than they had been with the last few.

Top Tracks: The Mountain, The Moon Cave, The Hardest Thing, Orange County, The Manifesto, Delirium, Damascus, The Sad God

7/10

Magdalena Bay - "Imaginal Disk" (2024)

I've got to thank Tiktok for this one. I knew absolutely nothing about the synth pop duo prior to the release of this record (their second), and immediately upon release my Tiktok was filled up with videos claiming it to be the best record of the year. And as I have been on a bit of a pop-girl kick this year (BRAT review will be coming at some point, and maybe a few others if I get time), I decided to check this out. I am so glad I did, as I can totally see where all those Tiktoks were coming from and it probably would've been my favourite record this year if the new Cure album that has just come out didn't turn out as well as it has.

The sound of Imaginal Disk is a kaleidoscopic collage of early 00's synth pop and dance pop, indietronica, psych pop and progressive pop, and even a bit of chillwave and late 90's female singer/songwriters. It is such a tightly written and amazingly produced record. Every track has so much attention to detail, little quirks, and leftfield switch-ups or unique progressions that makes the record envelop you, as you get lost in the sound. The tracks seamlessly flow into each other, making the album feel like a real cinematic journey over its 53min runtime.

Lyrically and thematically, the record is just as ambitious, exploring the ideas of an idealised 'perfect' sense of self and struggle between chasing the idea that we have to be perfect to be happy (or to please others) and forging your own unique path where you can be fulfilled without fitting neatly into a predefined box. Going hand in hand with this is a lot of lyrical focus on the difficulty discerning between 'true love' and love and companionship out of convivence and comfort and whether the former is actually real and obtainable, and the latter inauthentic and ultimately unfulfilling. These ideas are left open ended, which I think really adds to the experience of the record as if its almost trying to get you to ponder these concepts yourself as opposed to just throwing them at you as a definitive worldview. They're also not really obvious on first listen, rather layered into the subtext, which is giving the record huge replay value for me.

The first leg of the record is phenomenal, opening with building opener She Looked Like Me!. The first half of the song builds up with glitchy synths and booming drums, before switching up into a tension building second half with triumphant horns. The lyrics depict a strange encounter with the protagonists doppleganger, and the existential reflection on ones own uniqueness and identity. This leads into the woozy and groovy Killing Time, which explores the themes of 'killing time' and constantly putting of dreams and waiting for the ideal moment. The dreamy Enya-sounding True Blue Interlude segues this into the album's lead single, Image. The song is an absolute banger of an alt-dance tune with an infectious groove and Mica Tenebaum's silky smooth vocals gliding above the beat. "Ooooh my God, Make me in your image" is the leading hook and damn it sounds so sexy. Death & Romance follows straight after and somehow tops Image. The house-esque staccato piano hits, spacy synths and Mica's vocals sounding like Kylie give the song a very 00s dance-pop feel. The track just keeps ascending and ascending to this euphoric place - which juxtaposes the ecstatic feel against some quite heavy lyrics pondering whether there is anything more to life beyond the songs title. This run comes to a close with Fear, Sex, which serves as an outro to Death & Romance that unwinds the beat and reworks it into something more sinister as the driving forces of death and romance are presented under a different light - being fear and sex.

Other highlights include the sombre and sprawling ballad, Watching T.V. (a track about the prevailing fear during the 2000's that watching too much T.V is mentally damaging and also the idea of losing yourself in the screen while avoiding reality) and the epic Tunnel Vision. The song starts out as quite a stripped back synth pop song with chiming synths, before the protagonist realises that they are developing tunnel vision in their life and that they need to get out. At this point the song flips on its head for a hypnotic space rock outro. The thick, heavy base and skittering, lazer-like effects sound so sinister and menacing. This is followed by the super light and breezy synth funk jam, Love Is Everywhere, a perfect antidote to the darker middle section of the record of the record that has preceded it. The bombastic dance pop vibes return with the very in your face That's My Floor, a track all about taking life by the scruff of it's neck and making it your dancefloor. It's kinda garish but in the best way, with a sitar middle section and a scratchy funk-rock guitar outro. Similarly, Cry for Me is a straight up throwback to the groovey Nu-Disco of the early 00's and is great fun.

The record closes with Angel on a Satellite and The Ballad of Matt & Mica. Angel on a Satellite strips out all the synths for an approach akin to late 90's pop-leaning singer / songwriters. The song is a nice change of pace for the record and really highlights the emotionality of the lyrics of trying to forge your own path against the metaphysical will of an 'angel on a satellite' above you. All of the records themes are tied up and brought into the real world with The Ballad of Matt & Mica, a joyous ode to the duo, their friendship and their pursuit of the dreams over a pre-determined 'easy life'.

What I truely admire about Imaginal Disk, is that as heavy and thoughtful the lyrics and themes of the record, it is so thoroughly enjoyable and uplifting. Literally every time I put it on, I come away in a better mood than when I started. That is on top of how intricate and well constructed it is, alongside that it is damn catchy. I'm so glad that I've been turned onto Magdalena Bay because this album is such a refreshing and unique experience.

Top Tracks: She Looked Like Me!, Killing Time, True Blue Interlude, Image, Death & Romance, Fear, Sex, Watching T.V., Tunnel Vision, Love Is Everywhere, That's My Floor, Cry For Me, Angel on a Satellite, The Ballad of Matt & Mica.

9/10

Declan McKenna - "What Happened to the Beach?" (2024)

Declan McKenna's first two records were albums that showed promise, with a handful of impeccable songs on each, but were contained within messy records that felt less than the sum of their parts overall. I liked him enough that I was always going to check out his third record, but I am pleasantly surprised by how into it I am, and how frequently I have been giving it a spin in the months since its release.

On What Happened to the Beach?, Declan has ditched a lot of the glam rock aesthetics that characterised his previous release, Zeros; replacing them with influences of 60's psychedelic pop and sunshine pop, alongside more modern neo-pysche and hypnagogic pop. I can here shades of The Kinks, The Beatles, MGMT and a whole host of others on the these tracks, and I think this vibe suits Declan's persona much better. On WHTTB? Declan comes across like some weird Hollywood old-timer, who's spent a little too much time in the sun and is just on a planet of his own. He sells this subtle off-kilter weirdness so much more easily than the ostentatious glam rockstar he was playing on Zeros. Similarly, the hit or miss social commentary of Declan's previous work is largely absent, replaced with more personal and introspective lyrics mostly focusing on the social disconnect and pressure of expectations that come with fame. All of this together creates a woozy and hazy vibe, like some sort of summer malaise.

The record opens with the worbly and distorted intro track, WOBBLE, where the album title is repeated again and again, before launching into the breezy but moody Elevator Hum. This track, alongside Mullholland's Dinner and Wine capture this summery yet melancholic vibe perfectly. Both have this feeling of existential longing to them, and are the best tracks on the album. On Elevator Hum. glistening synths are set against a trip-hoppy breakbeat and faint distorted horns that finally poke through the mix towards the end of the track. Mullholland's Dinner and Wine similarly fuses a chill synth-funk bassline with woozy distorted horns and some really existential lyrics where Declan describes all of the things fame has given him but how he's still not satisfied.

There are some other great moments on the first half of the record. I Write The News starts off as a Lennon-esque acoustic guitar cut with lyrics that in typical Lennon fashion appear to be profound on the surface, but are actually just nonsense upon closer inspection. The track then flips on its head, with the guitar swapped out for bouncy psychedelic synths. Nothing Works is a catchy indie pop rock tune, with fuzzed out and noisy production that gives it a real sense of energy that matches some of Declan's biggest hits. This is followed by the raucous The Phantom Buzz (Kick In), which is about the last remnant of the glam rock aesthetic of Zeros. The guitars roar and Declan Howls on the mic.

Not everything on the record lands as well as these moments. Lead single Sympathy is such a straightforward sunshine pop tune, it feels kind of derivative and lacks any of the genuine oddball energy that permeates the best of the record. It just sounds like a Kinks pastiche in all honesty. Breath of Light feels like an attempt at the weirder, uncommercial side of MGMT's music, and is fine but nothing particularly interesting. Honest Test is a crooning lounge pop song that reminds me of Arctic Monkey's excursions into the genre, although I'd say its closer to one of the duds on The Car than the genuinely interestingly written stuff on Tranquillity Base. 

The record comes to quite a sleepy and uneventful close, although the final couple of songs have grown on me to an extent. The gentle acoustic guitars and simple vocal melodies of Mezzanine have such a low-key summery vibe, and the subtle swelling of horns and electric guitar as the song progresses is actually really nice. The penultimate track, It's An Act, is in effect the closer, as the final track is essentially just a short little coda, and is perfectly serviceable, although pretty uneventful and unimpactful.

I feel like Declan has found a sound that really fits him on this record, and has produced his most consistently enjoyable album thus far. Not every song hits as hard as others, and there are points that feel a little derivative, but its a good time with more wins than losses.

Top Tracks: Elevator Hum, I Write The News, Mullholland's Dinner and Wine, Nothing Works, The Phantom Buzz

7/10

Glass Animals - "How To Be A Human Being" (2016)

I've been listening to Glass Animal's debut album, Zaba, for a few years now. The groups woozy psychedelic pop has a humid, tropical atmosphere which makes it perfect for hot summer evenings. With the group releasing new music, I have finally got round to checking out their follow-up, 2016's How To Be A Human Being. The core of the band's sound is still here (the glossy, multilayered production, Dave Bailey's sensual falsetto vocals), but it has been expanded upon with more ambitious elements and lyrical concepts.

Each of the tracks on How To Be A Human Being focuses on a different character, all inspired by people the group met while touring Zaba. We take a look inside the heads of these characters, with their inner monologues accentuated and absurd-ified. It reminds me of the writing style in fellow indietronica band Everything Everything's work. The lyrics here are not as socio-politically charged or as taken to the extreme as EE, but do evoke the same feelings of silly absurdity tinged by a genuine sense of believability.

The record opens on an incredibly bombastic, anthemic note with Life Itself. This track is built around groovy afrobeat rhythm, and revolves around this loser like character who's mother is disappointed in his life choices. It explodes into a massive chorus with blaring synths and distorted horns, where the character seemingly doesn't care. It creates a weird juxtaposition, as the music sounds like your supposed to root for this character, yet the lyrics clearly describe why your not supposed to. Youth carries on this anthemic atmosphere, although it isn't quite as in your face. The track is a typical coming of age story about growing up. It hits all the right notes, and the silky smooth chorus is irresistible.

Season 2 Episode 3 is more stripped back than the first two tracks. There's a rolling hi-hat beat and midi-esque, chip tune sounding synthesizers. It gives the track a retro video game feel, and even samples sounds from Super Mario Brothers. The song is about people who lounge around all day binge watching TV, and the music really fits the vibe. It's all very chilled. The  majority of Mama's Gun is a tense build up with a jangly piano motif and wondrous sounding woodwind. Eventually some choral backing vocals come in just before the track gently crescendos. All that tension feels like it needs a bigger payoff, which keeps the eery vibe of the song intact right towards the end. 

While the album doesn't quite get as festival ready as the opening tracks, it still has some massive sounding songs. Pork Soda has the excellent hook of "Pineapples are in my head, I've got nobody cause I'm braindead" and the track just builds up the layers more and more until track feels like it genuinely could not sound any more full. Take A Slice has a really fuzzed out, bluesy guitar and a woozey, sensual vocal melody. It sounds like modern Tame Impala and Like Clockwork... era Queens Of The Stone Age smashed together, and is absolutely mental and surprisingly works. Blaring horns and staccato piano come in when the chorus hits, all accumulating in the guitar solo outro that is just so much noise but brilliant.

The album sags just a little in the middle. Cane Shuga is perfectly fine but doesn't really do much for me, and [Premade Sandwiches] is one of many tracks that try to be Fitter Happier. It's still one of the better imitators, but I don't really know why artists try to go for that idea - because no one ever seems to match Fitter Happier's balance between irony and paranoia. The Other Side Of Paradise's chorus features this very 2010s, post-dubstep, bass drop. It is pretty tastefully done here, but it does make the track already seem a bit dated - and is the only point where the album seems to be chasing the trends of the time.

These weaker moments are still well done, their ideas don't quite connect with me like the rest of the track list. So despite the ambition here, I'd say I like it about the same as Zaba. Both are great albums, with different qualities. Zaba goes for a more consistent tone and vibe; whereas HTBAHB is more ambitious and higher highs, but has a few moments that don't hit like the rest of the record. I'm really quite interested in what the group do for album 3 now, although the singles released so far haven't really landed with me the way these two records have.

Top Tracks: Life Itself, Youth, Season 2 Episode 3, Pork Soda, Take A Slice

8/10

Tame Impala - "The Slow Rush" (2020)

While I more preferred Tame Impala's psych-rock sound of their first two LPs (I've grown to love Lonerism even more in particular since I reviewed it) to Currents' nu-disco and psyched up synth pop, I wasn't expecting Kevin Parker and co to return to it. I was also okay with it, as there were elements of Currents that I thought were great and the band could hone the sound further (much like the jump from Innerspeaker to Lonerism). For the most part, I feel that's what we've got, although there are some things holding the record back in my opinion.

The first two singles for the record dropped in early 2019, Patience and Borderline, before Parker delayed and reworked the album. This resulted in a new album version of Borderline and Patience being dropped entirely. I think this was a good move, as these singles had a very washed out and dream-poppy aesthetic, but felt rather limp and lifeless to me. The new version of Borderline is miles better, with the bass and drums pumped up and the whole song sped up. The squelchy bass and glistening keys give the song an infectious, dance-able groove. The first half of the record follows suit and provides a bunch of super groovy and psyched out songs indebted to not just disco but other forms of dance music as well, primarily house and Balearic beat.

One More Year opens up the record with chopped up, stuttering vocals, before the snappy beat fades in and Kevin's lead falsetto vocals glide on top. The lyrics intrigue me, dealing with the idea of time and what Kevin wants to achieve if he only had one more year. Perhaps it's relating to the band, and Parker is questioning if they can keep it up. The track builds momentum until the line "One more year, from today...", where the track breaks down into this effortlessly cool outro. These themes of time and achievement, and self doubt run through the album, and Kevin has clearly grown as a lyricist since Currents. The lyrics only really served the purpose of atmosphere on the bands earlier releases, but on Current's Kevin started to stretch out and tell more detailed experiences. However the lyrics on that album sometimes had a sour and wallowing tone, which is not the case here. It really feels like Kevin is writing introspective and emotional songs with more balance and less awkward self-pity.

The best example of this is my favourite song on the record, Posthumous Forgiveness. The song details Kevin's fractious relationship with his late father, and the tone of his voice excellently conveys the pain and hurt, and also the internal confusion that Parker feels towards his dad. The heavy, distorted synth line that runs throughout the song, accumulating in a massive, crushing breakdown really sell the tension and importance of this song. This leads into the second section of the song; a much breezier part where Kevin goes on to forgive his father and wish that he was still around to see all the amazing thing he is doing with the band.

Breathe Deeper, by contrast, is a much simpler song. It's an out and out dance song with an incredibly infectious groove and hook. The sparkling keys and funky bassline play off each other so well, and Kevin sounds uncharacteristically confident and swaggering on the vocals. Following this, Tomorrow's Dust slows the pace back down. The track has a very dream pop vibe, with the strummed acoustic guitar and reverb soaked instrumentation. Kevin sings about the past and how long ago and unrelatable it feels to him now, specifically referencing the bands back catalogue with the line "There's no use trying to relate to that old song".

It's at the half way point with the song On Track where the album's problems start to show. For each song I enjoy on the back half of this record, it is punctuated with one I don't care for. This completely kills the momentum of the album. On Track is the record's only ballad, and it builds up from a skeletal first verse to the chorus, which completely flat-lines and isn't memorable in the slightest. As the song progresses more instrumentation is introduced, but everything is so soaked in reverb and fader that it doesn't feel like the track really builds up as it progresses, and leaves me with the feeling of 'that was really 5 minutes?'.

Following On Track is Lost In Yesterday, a straight up disco-pop song with a catchy as all hell chorus and some excellent lyrics about losing your self in nostalgia and only embracing the past if it's beneficial and forgetting about it if it is not. The lyric "Eventually terrible memories turn into great ones" always jumps out at me on every listen. But then the track Is It True follows it. The track isn't bad, but to me it feels like it's trying to do the same thing as Breathe Deeper with a less interesting beat and a more clunky chorus. I like the switched up beat and jazzier, more loose feel to the outro, but it is just an outro, so doesn't really save the song.

It Might Be Time opens up like some kind of reverby Supertramp song, with a very 70s sounding keyboard line and Parker's high falsetto vocals. The lyrics of the song follow on from Lost In Yesterday, dealing with Kevin's fears of the bands relevancy going forward and whether he enjoys it as much as he used to. The track builds into a wall of sound as it goes on, with massive chugging drums, crunchy guitars and this wild, siren-y, distorted synth line blaring on top. It really dramatises the themes of the track.

The final track, One More Hour has a similar pop-prog feel to it. It phases through multiple sections with different instruments and effects popping in and out. The lyrics come across brutally honest, talking about Kevin's various motivations behind the band, his need for solitude every so often, and his doubts of the band's continued success and relevancy. The track builds up in intensity to the point where some noisy, distorted guitars come into the mix. It gives the ending a very shoegaze-y, ethereal atmosphere; which is furthered by the fade out at the end of the track. It makes me feel like Kevin is ascending off into the clouds.

But sandwiched between these two tracks is the completely uneventful and unnecessary interlude, Glimmer. I honestly don't know what purpose it serves, as the album is long enough as it is; and It Might Be Time and One More Year are quite tonally similar, and do not need an interlude between them. At 57 minutes, this album on the whole feels quite bloated. The weaker tracks in the second half don't feel necessary, and there's a handful of studio snippets separating some the songs that could easily come out. Quite a few of the tracks have long, extended outros, which are fine at a track by track level, but just drag the album out when listening all the way through.

The best tracks on this album are really great (and Posthumous Forgiveness is fantastic), but it does feel Kevin got a bit carried away when putting it together. It's just simply an hour long album with 45 mins worth of ideas. I don't think ill be coming to it in full very often because of this, but 45 mins of good ideas is still quite a lot of good ideas, so it's worth checking out for the highlights alone.

Top Tracks: One More Year, Borderline, Posthumous Forgiveness, Breathe Deeper, Tomorrow's Dust, Lost In Yesterday, It Might Be Time, One More Hour

7/10

Tame Impala - "Currents" (2015)

Currents is a quite the shift from Tame Impalas previous record, Lonerism. It ditches many of the guitars for more of a psychedelic synth-pop style. This new approach makes the record feel much more sonically dense than Lonerism, which I'm not really latching on to as much (I really liked the spacious atmosphere of Lonerism). I find it slightly impenetrable, as if I can't really get absorbed by the record.

The album opens with its best cut, Let It Happen, a track driven by its thumping, dance-able bass riff. The track goes through multiple phases, one of which where the track chops up like old scratched CDs do, only to do it again and then more frequently until the track bursts out of it with the return of the bass line. The Less I Know The Better has a similar bass line, with Kevin Parker singing some pretty catchy falsetto vocals. I also get a bit of a disco vibe from this track with the strings which float around in the mix in the back half of the song.

Disciples sounds far more similar to Lonerism than anything off this record, being a more guitar driven track. It's such a shame that it is so short, as it has the spaciousness the rest of the album lacks. I feel like Nangs is the best exploration of the synth style, which is also far shorter than it could be. The track is rich in atmosphere, having this wobbling, warbling noises. I also feel it benefits from having no vocals. The vocals across the album are in this heavily processed falsetto style, which works on some tracks, including the aforementioned Let It Happen and The Less I Know The Better, as well as Reality In Motion. However they feel far less dynamic than on Lonerism, just sitting on top of the mix where they used to dart around all over the place. 

A friend also brought to my attention that the lyrics feel just a little whiny. While Tame Impala has always had somewhat sad undertones, there are points on this record which verge into self-pity. The worst offender for this is Past Life, a track which has these really cringy pitch-shifted spoken word vocals about a previous partner. The track also has this incredibly bad sounding distortion effect placed on the entire mix at points which really doesn't mix well with the rest of the tune.

Current's is an incredibly made and produced album, but almost too so. Outside of some really great tracks (I mean Let It Happen is phenomenal), it's just too dense for me to really find myself being absorbed by the music. It is still enjoyable to have on in the background and has creative moments in most of the tracks which I appreciate. I can imagine someone else with slightly different tastes digging it a lot more than I did.

Top Tracks: Let It Happen, Nangs, The Moment, The Less I Know The Better, Disciples, Reality In Motion

6/10