COYH vs Tame Impala

Wed 7th Jan, 2009 in Features

Nick Johnston , lead singer of Cut Off Your Hands, asks the tough questions of psych-rockers Tame Impala in the lead-up to St Jeromes Laneway Festival.

COYH : To my ears your music invokes tasteful references to bands like CAN, Cream and the Doors, however, I’ve noticed that a lot of Aussie media have been quick to label you as ‘the next aussie rock thing’ lumping you in with wolfmother et al. .Is this kind of branding accurate, are you informed by your cultural heritage? Or is it just lazy parochial journalism?

Tame Impala : I’d never really read a lot of music media stuff until recently and from what I’ve picked up it definitely seems like journalists like to put things into very simple categories, it’s as though they have to dumb everything down.

But I figured every band gets that and that it’s just something you have to live with, and if you try and argue endlessly about how unique your sound is then you’ll just look like a fool. That said we do make an effort to pull peoples ideas of what we are away from the rock thing. People sometimes latch onto the “classic rock” thing and then assume we’re into everything ROCK. It’s meant to be more about awesome beats and melodies, but played with instruments.

COYH : If you had to choose a favorite Australian band who would it be and why?

Tame Impala : Wolf & Cub. I saw them once in Perth and it was the best thing ever. Then I got into Vessels in a big way, in fact everyone at our house did. It didn’t feel like they were an Australian band either.

COYH : What other new bands from WA would you recommend checking out?

Tame Impala : The Silents. They have amazing songs/arrangements. Also CEASE, Because they’re the soundtrack to your mind’s engine room.

COYH : The word ‘psych’ often implies a lot of stoner jamming for hours on end – are you a band that locks themselves in a practice room for hours on end and plays whatever, or is the writing process more controlled, like one guy teaching the band a whole song…?

Tame Impala : Usually the writing gets done while the song’s being recorded, where parts and sections of songs get put down in whatever way, improvised or calculated, and the live show is more for the sake of doing it, so we can pick what parts of the recording we want to bring to the live show. The advantage of that is that it doesn’t have to be anything like the recording, and often isn’t, but the difference now is that we actually have a few dedicated fans who can sometimes be a bit disappointed if the song they came to hear is very different from the version they heard on the radio, so we usually reach a happy medium.

COYH : Your debut EP was recorded by yourselves in your home (.it sounds great too) can you please explain some of the recording process, ie what gear was used, was it live, or tracked?

Tame Impala : The recording side of Tame Impala has been mainly a solo project, and the EP is just 5 recordings picked from the vault and weren’t re-recorded, so some are quite old. I record lots of little 10 or 20 second seedlings, Jay is very good at picking which ones have potential. Instruments get tracked in any order, drums usually get done last and now days Jay and I record drum tracks together.

Most of the gear I have is just what I’ve accumulated very slowly over the years and most of it’s not very top-of-the-range so I’ve just learnt to make do, I figure it’s not what you have but how you use it.

COYH : How do you approach taking your recorded songs to the live context? Is it a carbon copy, with samples and loops in order to achieve the exact sound of the recording or do you prefer to improvise?

Tame Impala : There’s always the temptation to get it sounding exactly like the recorded version, in terms of sounds and texture etc, but we figure it’s better to just accept that it’s live and make the best of having one or two guitars instead of infinite. We don’t use any loops or samples at the moment but a good friend of ours tours with us sometimes as an extra guitarist/tambourinist/dancer which is always a great sonic luxury.

COYH : If you could go into a store and grab one piece of equipment right now, what would it be and why?

Tame Impala : Some kind of hollow-body bass guitar. I’m so far away from being able to afford one and they are bad ass.

COYH What one song do you most wish you had written?

Tame Impala : Somebody to Love – Jefferson Airplane, although I can’t sing like the G. Slick so I’m glad it was Jefferson Airplane.