Late on Wednesday night following Kuroma, Stardeath & White Dwarfs, Perth psychedelica buzz band Tame Impala played their sold out debut in Toronto.
The Horseshoe was packed with a decidedly chilled older crowd of mostly bearded men (about 60% I’d say) and had been sold out for nearly three weeks leading up to the fairly impersonal, musically stellar set by a quartet of kids that, despite their shy tender age can rock the fuck out.
With bare feet in tow lead vocalist Kevin Parker played the entire set with the help of his big toe, adjusting levels and kicking peddles to distort his guitar and later pulled out a kazoo to muddy his vocals on the second last track “Desire Be Desire Go”. Though we couldn’t help but wish his vocals levels higher, we didn’t mind that they skipped out without an encore from their already late weekday start.
Many obvious parallels have been drawn from their album Innerspeaker to The Beatles, especially in the case of Parker’s vocals (roll over Lennon), but upon hearing these boys play live, they didn’t appear to be on any drugs, choosing instead to whittle a niche within a echoey pinwheel of nouveau psych.
