Album Review: Tame Impala - The Slow Rush (2020)

I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect with The Slow Rush, the fourth Tame Impala album. I was relatively familiar with the very early Tame Impala work (2012-ish), the bulk of which was a sort of heavy psychedelic alt-pop. I liked it a lot.

But I was also aware that at some point during the near decade since I last paid any real attention, the “band” - or rather, Perth musician Kevin Parker - had made serious inroads into a much more mainstream commercial pop market. I knew this because my (then) teenage daughters had mentioned him in passing more than a few times. I struggled to reconcile their tastes with that of my own, and indeed, my own relationship with that early Tame Impala stuff.

Either they’d started using mind altering drugs, which seemed unlikely, or Parker had changed tack. I was always fairly confident it was the latter scenario, and one listen to The Slow Rush tends to confirm this. The album is light years removed from the edgy psychedelia of early Tame Impala.

Two things: Firstly, I’m carelessly writing this review without having ever listened to this album’s immediate predecessor, Currents (2015), which, as I understand it, was the album that launched Tame Impala into the wider mainstream consciousness. Secondly, some of that earlier stuff did actually hint at Parker’s love of good old fashioned commercial pop. It was just more covertly disguised.

So I picked this up blind, to discover that all masks are removed on The Slow Rush. Everything on it is finished with a very glossy sheen. It might even be called a dream pop album.

Tracks like opener, ‘One More Year’, advance single ‘Borderline’, and late album peak, ‘Lost In Yesterday’, are radio-friendly and melodic, full of hooks, and vaguely existential in theme. Without ever becoming too weighty.

Influences from the halcyon days of soft rock’s 1970s golden era are everywhere on The Slow Rush, and while I wouldn’t usually have a problem with that (yes you would - Truthful Ed), the OCD-challenging stop/start nature of mid-album cuts like ‘Posthumous Forgiveness’ and ‘Breathe Deeper’ merely trigger an unjust sense of loathing. Each plays out like a series of plush half formed ideas. Probably just me.

The closing track, ‘One More Hour’, brings us full circle to the similarly titled opener, and its swirling synths do veer close to the grandiose psychedelic stuff of yester-year, but only in a far more disposal lightweight context.

I’m sure The Slow Rush will sell, and is selling, by the truckload. It’s not a bad album by any means, just not great, and maybe even a bit, meh. Dream pop? ... yeah, nah ... let’s file this one away under “yacht rock for millennials” ... and I do mean that in the kindest possible way, honest.

Your Flexible Friend: flexi-disks and their curious history

Craig Stephen takes a look at the life and times of the flexi-disk, and his own connection with the format …

They sometimes require gold coins to be placed on top for them in order to play; they’re flimsy and easily lost, and have been used for selling things like sugar-laden cereals or big macs. But there’s a certain charm about flexi-disks, a format that was used from the mighty to the obscure of pop music for more than a decade. 

My own modest collection of flexis contains wonderfully rare material by bands of the British indie scene of the mid to late 80s, and early 90s, from bands that did little to nothing else, to bands that became involved in the various ‘scenes’ of the time.

Totem among these releases is a flexi by the Manic Street Preachers, issued in 1990, shortly after their first single was given away with the Hopelessly Devoted fanzine, which presumably ended up in my recycling bin, reducing its value somewhat. The Manics contributed ‘UK Channel Boredom’ which, if the disk was of reasonable quality (and didn’t require three coins to prevent it from bubbling), would be a rather excellent example of the punk metal they were purveying at the time. 

It was a split single-sided disk with a band called The Laurens, very much the yang to the Manics’ ying, who contributed the pleasantly melodic ‘I Don’t Know What the Trouble Is’.  It’s fair to say that the Laurens’ effort hasn’t led to the disk being sold online for what can only be described as ludicrous amounts.

I also have a flexi by The Cult: ‘Wild Flower’ new mix, which came free in 1987 with the now defunct Record Mirror, a publication that regularly gave away impressive 7-inch singles. The back of this flexi contains suggestions of what you cannot do with it: “Get BBC2 on it”; “Use it as a makeshift shoehorn”; and “Pass it off as a £50 note”. But it does suggest you could use it to “make two into a pair of emergency binoculars”, and “use several to design a fancy dress outfit entitled “liquorice allsort” … thankfully, I ignored all such valid advice and still have it today.

We’ll have more from the collection later. 

A history lesson (of sorts) 

The first flexis  or “talking postcards” were intended to be personal. The user recorded a message onto phonograph grooves imprinted in resin-covered postcard then mail it to a friend to play on a turntable.

In the early 20th century the flexi became an alternative to the heavy and brittle 78. In the 1930s, the Durium company used their acetate in creating popular cardboard records - the ‘Hit of the Week’ series - that sold for only a few nickels at American newsstands.

When the post-World War II boom lead to a recording boom, flexis entered into a second golden age, with the focus more on promotion.

The most renowned use was on cereal boxes – the first known use of this was on the side of a Wheaties cereal box in the 1950s and these continued to be produced through the 1980s in the US. They were made using a special laminate that could be secured to cereal cartons. It’s a mass, captive market, after all. 

The peak of the flexi was when The Beatles sent out hundreds of thousands of  special  Christmas disks  to their fan clubs.

In 1973, the NME gave away an exclusive Alice Cooper track, a take on Elvis Presley’s ‘Slick Black Limousine’. On the flip side were four snippets from his forthcoming Billion Dollar Babies album, so not surprisingly this soon became a prized item amongst Cooper fans. 

ABBA were also prone to the odd exclusive freebie; their ABBA/Live 77 was a one-sided gold-coloured flexi that featured clips from that year's Australian tour. It was intended to be only available as a gift for kids selling books, papers, and magazines door-to-door at Christmas for the Jultidningsförlaget publishing corporation.

Perhaps the biggest flexi-disk giveaway was when McDonalds’s had 80 million flexis done featuring a version of the chain’s ‘menu song’. Only one record had the song in its entirety, and whoever got that won US$1 million.

A magazine dedicated entirely to the humble flexi-disk appeared in 1980 in Britain. Called  Flexipop  it was billed as “the world’s first singing magazine” and each issue contained an exclusive track from a major chart act. The list of artists contributing was extensive – The Jam, Soft Cell, Madness, The Associates, Blondie, The Cure, Depeche Mode and Genesis. Despite the range of stars and the sometimes curious and exclusive tracks they contributed, Flexipop only lasted until 1983.

So far, so Western capitalism, but in the Soviet Union, until it’s break-up, the flexi-disk played an unlikely role in subterfuge. During the 70s and 80s, when much Western rock was still banned, bootleggers and fans illegally pressed pirated tracks on to hospital X-ray film. Eventually the authorities twigged that excuses used by teenagers that the sheets were for "my uncle’s knee X-ray" were nonsense. 

Revival? 

As with vinyl in the 1990s and 2000s, flexi-disks suffered from the move to CDs, and pretty much became obsolete. 

But does that mean that flexi-disks are piggy-backing on the current love of vinyl? If there is it’s not something I’ve noticed. 

The California-based Pirates Press, which specialises mainly in punk and Oi! began producing flexi-disks in 2010 and claims to be the only producer in the world. Jack White’s Third Man Records hired them to produce 1,000 postcard records …“playable full colour postcards with grooves stamped in the glossy finish”.

For Record Store Day in 2019, second wave punk band Crass re-released ‘Do They Owe Us A Living?’ (a 1977 live version and another live version from 30 years later) on the format. 

There are more examples of flexi-disk releases, either on their own, or given away with albums, from the past five years, particularly on Record Store Day, but not enough to suggest some form of revival.

And back to the box in the spare room

This writers’ collection of flexi-disks (which given their thinness don’t take up much space) also includes such gems as Baby Lemonade’s ‘Jiffy Neckwear Creation’ backed by ‘The Bachelor Pad’ (on a 6 ½-inch disk) with the admirable advice “not suitable for deep frying”. 

This was part of a release of twee flexis by the same Glasgow label (Sha-La-La) that included The Clouds’ ‘Jenny Nowhere’ backed by Mighty Mighty’s ‘Throwaway’ (Throwaway version), both of which were fine examples of mid-80s jangly pop. 

Delving deeper into tweedom was a three-track flexi that came with the Shoot the Tulips fanzine and was led by the Pale Saints, whose track ‘Children Break’ was the first thing they ever did, and a world away from the shoegazing sound that they developed and became renowned for. 

The Savlons and the folky Kerry Fiddles were also involved in this, the one and only contribution to music both acts ever gave the world.

The Senseless Things contributed three tracks to one flexi-disk, at the time having had only one single behind them with far more to come over the next decade.

Chapterhouse contributed ‘Losing Touch With My Mind’/‘It Won’t Be Wrong’ on two separate disks; the first track was by Spacemen 3, the second by The Byrds. 

Spacemen 3, meanwhile, contributed ‘I Love You’ and ‘Sometimes’, also on two separate flexi-disks which came free with The Catalogue monthly magazine in February 1991.

The Barmy Army released at least two football-related flexis, one called ‘Leroy’s Boots’ and the other called ‘Billy Bonds MBE’, both of which were released by On-U Sound. Neither were cut so are square disks. The latter contains commentary, including when Bonds collected the FA Cup with West Ham Utd, and fan chants set to a wonderful dub anthem … I am sure the gaffer of this site will heartily concur.

(Indeed he does! … and I’ll also note that the popular 80s US alt-pop magazine Trouser Press was relatively prolific when it came to including flexis with copies of the magazine … acts like Altered Images, Berlin, Buggles, Japan, Joan Jett, OMD, REM, and XTC all featuring on flexis at various points during the magazine's relatively short-lived but much celebrated existence – Anorak-wearing Ed).      

Disjecta Membra on AudioCulture

New Zealand pop culture heritage site, AudioCulture, recently published my profile of pioneering local darkwave band Disjecta Membra. A band I’ve mentioned a few times already on the blog, and although I’m a big fan, writing this became quite a mission. It started out as a labour of love and wound up being something else entirely. 

I think the initial bare bones of the piece were drafted in early 2019, maybe earlier, then it was abandoned for months, before I could finally summon the energy to finish it, edit it, and submit for publication late in the year. It became something of a huge “mental block” for me - I carried on with various other writing projects throughout the year while this piece sat lonely and unloved in my work-in-progress file (aka, the “too hard” basket).

What I learned most of all during this protracted process is that you never quite know a band as well as you think you do. Even after it was published, after further editing by the site, the band’s key protagonist Michel Rowland politely contacted me to ask if a few factual errors could be corrected (done, to some extent, I think). When you’re writing a profile about something niche for a site as widely read and mainstream as AudioCulture, there is a danger that your account becomes definitive by default, and it’s hugely important to get timelines and band line-ups absolutely spot on. Otherwise, why bother? 

Another thing I learned is that it’s very difficult to condense 20-plus years of band history, particularly one with so many band personnel changes across that period, into a manageable, readable, digestible 1500 to 2000 words. Nobody visiting a pop culture website wants War and Peace, after all. 

Initially, back when the idea of a Disjecta Membra profile was still forming in my befuddled brain, I had approached Rowland to ask if we could sit down to record a conversation about the band’s 20-odd year journey. We’d previously met at one of his gigs a few years back, we shared mutual friends, and tentatively planned to co-author a piece about local musician Chris Sheehan (R.I.P.) for AudioCulture. Rowland is something of a keen historian and researcher, and a Sheehan fan, and I was hoping my own fandom and knowledge of Sheehan’s early years would help shape that piece. For one reason or another, that idea has been (temporarily?) shelved, and it turns out that life also got in the way of Rowland and I sitting down to chat about Disjecta Membra. I’d have transcribed the chat and use his direct quotes to form the basis of a band profile. 

With the benefit of hindsight, that would have been the best thing for all concerned. It is certainly what worked best for three of the four profiles I’ve previously submitted to AudioCulture, and it is a process I’ve become more used to when writing similar stuff for NZ Musician. Left to my own devices, without the time, will, or any real insight, it became very difficult, despite the band’s own meticulously detailed website being on hand to guide me. I still feel I didn’t do a particularly great job.

Anyway, you’re not here for War and Peace, and I’m most definitely not Leo Tolstoy, so just click here (Disjecta Membra profile on AudioCulture) to learn a little bit more about one of Aotearoa’s most underrated bands of the past couple of decades … 

Pitch Black vs Adrian Sherwood

When your all-time favourite producer remixes a track on the latest single from one of your all-time favourite local artists, it’s always going to be noteworthy enough to mention it on your otherwise rather inactive music blog, right?

In this case, that producer is On-U Sound guru and dubologist extraordinaire Adrian Sherwood, and that artist is the equally adored electronic-dub duo Pitch Black. The single is the title track from Pitch Black’s 2019 album Third Light, and it features three mixes of the track – the bass-tastic original, a mix from Portland producer Bodie, and the pick of the bunch, naturally, Sherwood’s Echoes of the Night Dub Mix.

It can be picked up on Bandcamp for less than the price of a cup of coffee … or £2 in regular currency. Grab it.

The Strummer Files: Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros - Global a Go-Go (Hellcat records, 2001)

Craig Stephen returns with another offering on Joe Strummer’s post-Clash legacy … 

The magnus opus of the trio of Mescaleros records was this immense and intense collection that, as its title alone suggests, took a worldwide overview, stretching from Ukraine to New Zealand. Get ready for a trip around the world in 80 minutes (or far less).

In ‘Bhindi Bhagee’, Strummer meets a New Zealander on the high road of a diverse London community, and is asked where he can get some mushy peas. A bemused Strummer replies that they haven’t got any of that particular dish, “but we do got … Balti, bhindi, strictly hindi, dal halal/ We got rocksoul, okra, Bombay duck ra/ Shrimp beansprout, comes with it or without, with it or without.” 

And he hasn’t stopped there as there’s also: “Bagels soft or simply harder/ Exotic avocado or toxic empanada/ We got akee, lassi, Somali waccy baccy” … 

Strummer is making clear to this colonial with a 1970s view of Britain that the city he’s just arrived in has diverse culinary tastes reflecting the varied cultures of modern Britain. Just as he’s finished his culinary spiel, the protagonist explains that he’s in a band and reels off the different forms of music it plays, in the same manner as above: “We got Brit pop, hip-hop, rockabilly, lindy hop/ Gaelic heavy metal fans, fighting in the road.” 

Meanwhile, on the title track Strummer hails the universality of music: “Buddy Rich in Burundi/ Quadrophenia in Armenia/ Big Youth booming in Djkarta/ Nina Simone over Sierra Leone.”

‘Cool ‘N’ Out’ is a road trip across the States with Strummer’s typically obtuse lyrics: “Fix that gauge or you run out of gas/ A cool operator can make it last/ Say, from here to Indiana and across Illinois/ We're rockin’ the girls and a-boppin' on the boys/ And I spot a little bitty on a little bam-bam/ That pill poppers hopping on a city bound tram.”

‘Shaktar Donetsk’ reflects on eastern European migration to the west; a man from Macedonia pays a shady character handsomely to truck him into the UK on a potentially perilous journey in search of a new life: “If you really wanna go - alive or dead my friend” … a line that seems prophetic given recent deaths in cold, airless trucks. 

Like ‘Tony Adams’ on 1999’s Rock Art and the X-Ray Style, the football connection isn’t central to the tale but it does provide some background: the protagonist wears the woolly scarf of Shahktar Donetsk (the official club name), inherited from his father, one of the Ukraine-based exiles of the former Yugoslavia. 

‘At The Border, Guy’ is a wonderful, seven-minute epic, that builds and builds with its reggae fusion. There’s the sound of a harmonica in the distance as percussion and bass are used to effect for a track that gains strength to the very end.

Apart from a rather pointless 18-minute ‘Minstrel Boy’ that rounds off the album this is a magnificent effort from someone still sorely missed.

But while Strummer’s name is prominent, credit needs to be given to the Mescaleros, who were far from a session band. This was a tight unit, and Global A Go-Go is much more of a cohesive group effort than the more song-based Rock Art. 

Numerous instruments were used but their usage didn’t come across as forced or to be clever. These include bongos, wurlitzers, French horns, Spanish guitars, witchdoctor bells, whistles and “live echo plating and sounds destruction”. Strummer's lyrics are of the metaphorical, socially aware style that he used in the Clash. 

It’s by far the finest effort of three by the Mescaleros and the best album Strummer was involved with for about 15 years.