Tame Impala: Innerspeaker (2LP, import) [INTERSCOPE]

Why you'll love it

This US-pressed 2LP set spreads Kevin Parker's debut across four sides. Innerspeaker reached No. 4 in Australia and went platinum there, and it won the J Award for Australian Album of the Year.

This edition

• 2LP set
• Pressed in the USA

About the album

Before the festival headline slots and the stadium lights, Kevin Parker made his first album in a beach shack. He rented Wave House at Injidup, about four hours south of Perth, and from June to August 2009 recorded nearly everything himself, with a little more done in Fremantle and at home. Parker wrote, recorded and produced the lot, with Jay Watson credited on one track.

The tapes then flew to Tarbox Road Studios in Cassadaga, New York, where Dave Fridmann mixed them into a thick, phasing, late 60s haze, and Greg Calbi mastered them at Sterling Sound. "It Is Not Meant To Be" opens on a slow, sun-dazed groove, "Solitude Is Bliss" was the first single in April 2010, "Lucidity" and "Expectation" followed, and "Why Won't You Make Up Your Mind?" came out as a single the next year. "Runway, Houses, City, Clouds" stretches out into a long, gorgeous drift.

Rolling Stone's Australian awards named it album of the year in 2011, and Pitchfork later put it at No. 83 on its best of the decade so far. Not bad for a chap whose main studio expense was the sea view.

Also at Kops: more Tame Impala on vinyl · browse Alternative

Tracklist

Listen

On Modular / Interscope (cat# MODVL128), a reissue of the 2010 album.