Tame Impala: InnerSpeaker (2LP, UK import) [FICTION]

Why you'll love it

Fiction's 2LP pressing spreads the debut over four sides in a gatefold jacket, mastered by Greg Calbi. It won the J Award and Rolling Stone Australia's Album of the Year, went platinum in Australia and gold in the UK, and Pitchfork scored it 8.5.

This edition

• 2LP set, four sides
• Gatefold jacket
• Fiction pressing (cat# 3795299), imported
• Mastered by Greg Calbi

About the album

Kevin Parker made most of InnerSpeaker at Wave House, a beach house in Injidup, about four hours south of Perth, between June and August 2009. He wrote and played nearly everything himself, planned to mix it himself too, and then sensibly handed the tapes to Dave Fridmann at Tarbox Road in upstate New York, the man behind The Flaming Lips' and MGMT's big records. Parker said he wanted the sound to be "absolutely explosive," and between them they got there: drums that thump like the late-60s greats, guitars swirling in phase, and Parker's voice floating over the top like a slightly worried John Lennon.

"Solitude Is Bliss" was the first single and is still the one people know, but "Lucidity," "Expectation" and "Alter Ego" are just as good, and "Runway, Houses, City, Clouds" stretches out for seven glorious minutes. Leif Podhajsky's cover, a photo of the Great Smoky Mountains folded into itself again and again, suits the music perfectly.

It peaked at No. 4 in Australia and No. 9 on Billboard's vinyl chart. Not bad for a record made in a beach house by a chap who mostly wanted to be left alone with his pedals.

Tracklist

Listen

On Fiction (cat# 3795299), a reissue of the 2010 album.