TAME IMPALA Vinyl & CDs

Review: Tame Impala's breakthrough album 'Lonerism' celebrates its tenth anniversary with a special edition reissue. Through tracks like 'Elephant', 'Feels Like We Only Go Backwards' and 'Endors Toi', the album is known for introducing psychedelia to a new generation of hungry music fans in the early 2010s, and features Kevin Parker's distinctive falsetto vocals and intricate guitarwork throughout. The reissue here includes various bonuses, demos and "assorted sketches", casting renewed light on an important record for both the music-loving public, and an Aussie band/project destined for stardom.

Review: Kevin Parker is a real enigma of a musician. The brains behind the rightly celebrated and ever-surprising Tame Impala, he's never one for delivering quite what you expect, while still understanding that one of the most important things in music is striking a balance between the familiarity disciples need, and the expressive exploration that can prick the ears of the previously uninitiated.

Album number four, "The Slow Rush", certainly adopts a different outlook to previous undertakings. It also more than lives up to its name. It's smooth, tripped out (perhaps not so surprising on the latter front) and strikingly void of those highs that seem to offer the aural equivalent to some opiate-amphetamine blend. But we don't miss out. Instead, we're given permutations of soul, prog rock and acid house, perhaps making for the most expansive record this guy has been responsible for.

Review: Australian combo Tama Impala has always been hard to pin down, with their two studio albums to date displaying a keen desire to capture a trippy, psychedelic vibe, whilst refusing to settle on one easy-to-categorize sound. Currents, their fourth album, continues this trend, toning down some of the psychedelic rock elements in favour of nods to blue-eyed soul, woozy dream-pop, cheery summery pop (see the radio hit in waiting "The Less I Know The Better"), and even the head-nodding rhythms of hip hop (which, incidentally, prove the perfect backing for the morphine pop wooziness of "Past Life"). It's a blend that re-casts the band as baked, inter-dimensional travellers with a neat line in enveloping, sun-kissed downtempo pop.

Review: Thundercat hasn't released any new music in some three years. This first new tune in a while comes alongside fellow cult favourite Tame Impala and is a limited edition, single-sided cheetah screenprint 7". The song is a perfect coming together of the two with lyrics musing on a doom relationship and real melodic synchronicity elevating the tune. A slew of new and much anticipated new live dates follows the release of this tasty new single and will see Thundercat play with the likes of Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Strokes.