Tame Impala – Currents

Currents is the third studio album by Australian musical project Tame Impala. It was released on 17 July 2015 by Modular Recordings and Universal Music Australia. In the United States it was released by Interscope Records and Fiction Records, while Caroline International released it in other international regions. Like the project’s previous two albums, Currents was written, recorded, performed, and produced by Kevin Parker. For the first time, Parker mixed the music and recorded all instruments by himself; the album featured no other collaborators.

After the release of his previous album, Lonerism (2012), Parker began work on Currents, largely recording at his home studio in Fremantle. He engrossed himself with writing and recording, and in keeping with his reputation as a musical auteur, laboured over the details of each song, ultimately causing the release date to be delayed by two months. In contrast to the psychedelic rock sound of the project’s prior work, Currents marks a shift to more dance-oriented music, with more emphasis placed on synthesisers than guitars. Parker was inspired to seek a change out of desire to hear Tame Impala’s music played in dance clubs and a more communal setting. Thematically, the record is about the process of personal transformation, which many critics interpreted to be the result of a romantic break-up. The album’s cover art depicting vortex shedding is a visualisation of these themes.

Currents was preceded by the release of the singles “Let It Happen”, “‘Cause I’m a Man” and “Eventually”. The album became the group’s best charting release, debuting at number one in Australia, number three in the United Kingdom, and at number four in the United States. Currents has sold over 1,000,000 copies in North America as of March 2022. Like its predecessors, the album received critical acclaim, and appeared on various critics’ lists of the best albums of 2015. At the 2015 ARIA Music Awards, Currents was awarded Best Rock Album and Album of the Year, and it also received nominations for the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album and the J Award for Australian Album of the Year. In 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Currents 382nd on its list of “The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time”. In December 2021, the album was listed at number 12 in Rolling Stone Australia‘s list of the “200 Greatest Albums of All Time”.