Score: 3.5/5
Tame Impala’s new album, “Currents,” is nearly as average as an album can get. While the album does have a few gems, the rest of the tracks are forgettable.
As a fan of Lonerism and Innerspeaker, I was looking forward to Tame Impala’s newest creation. When the first single off the album was released, “Let It Happen,” I was highly underwhelmed by how repetitive the song was and the amount of EDM stutter.
Instead of adding musical effect, it sounds like a CD skipping, and it was widely disappointing for a band that I felt used to managed to balance synth and other instruments well.
Upon listening to the album, I was happy to find that not every song was as big of a let down as “Let It Happen,” but I was also unhappy to find how hit or miss each song was. The hits are going to be considered some of the best Tame Impala has to offer, while the misses fall flat and hard. I would say that the album is almost 50/50 in terms of good and bad songs.
Songs like “Yes I’m Changing,” are lyrically strong with great instrumentals accenting the words. Listening to the song shows the effort and complexity Tame Impala puts into its songs, and I cannot stress enough how good of a song it is. “Yes I’m Changing” is easily the best song on the album, in my opinion.
Other notable songs off the album are “The Less I Know The Better,” “Past Life,” “Eventually” and “‘Cause I’m A Man.” If you are looking at the entire tracklist, that is less than half the songs. Less than half the songs on the album are actually worth listening to, which is not a good ratio of good to bad. If the songs I mentioned above were not as good as they are, I would score the album much worse.
As bland as I feel the album is, I recommend listening to the good songs off it. Those songs are a few of the best in the entire Tame Impala library of songs. The rest of the album can be tossed to the side.