摇滚趋势 (2015)

Currents is the third studio album by Australian musical project Tame Impala, released on 17 July 2015 by Modular Recordings. It was released by Interscope Records in the United States and by Fiction Records in the United Kingdom, while Caroline International released it in other 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 breakup. The album's cover art depicting vortex shedding is a visualisation of these themes.

Currents was supported by the release of the singles "Let It Happen", "'Cause I'm a Man", "Eventually" and "The Less I Know the Better". The album became the project's best charting release, debuting at number one in Australia, number three in the United Kingdom, and at number four in the United States. As of January 2023, Currents has sold over one million copies in the United States. 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 December 2021, the album was listed at number 12 in Rolling Stone Australia's list of the "200 Greatest Australian Albums of All Time", and in 2020, Rolling Stone ranked Currents 382nd on its list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time".

Background

Tame Impala emerged in the early 2010s as one of psychedelic rock's most prominent new acts. The group, fronted by musician Kevin Parker, released two albums that received adoration from music critics: Innerspeaker (2010) and Lonerism (2012). "Elephant" became an alt-rock radio hit, and was placed in several television series and commercials. Parker founded the band and is typically the sole operating member in the studio. In between Tame Impala releases, Parker founded the space disco band AAA Aardvark Getdown Services.

He began writing songs shortly after completing Lonerism, but was unable to specify when the album began to take shape: "There’s never really a start and never really an end either." The idea to compile his songs into an album came when he had between 10–20 songs ready. In May 2014, Parker spoke of his growing inclination toward recording the album in a triple J radio interview, explaining that: "I'm getting more and more sucked into the world of making an album. It's weird how it happens naturally, it's almost feels like a seasonal thing. I've started to think about tracklistings and all the things that come with an album."

The album's change in style has root in several events. Parker began to feel that even songs outside the psychedelic genre could possess its qualities; he made this assumption while under the influence of psychedelic mushrooms and cocaine and listening to the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive". At some point, Parker broke up with his girlfriend, French singer-songwriter Melody Prochet, and moved from Paris back to his hometown of Perth. According to Parker, "the only rule was to make an attempt to abandon the rules that I've set up in the past." This included toying with things he considered musically "cheesy" or taboo, including drum machines and various effects.

The album title Currents references the abandoned South Fremantle Power Station, where Parker found inspiration during the writing process for the album. He recalled, "A lot of the songs on Currents have passages that were directly inspired by the power house and doing laps of it. It is scary and confronting, but such a beautiful thing." Parker also wrote many of the album's lyrics on nearby beaches, including Fremantle's South Beach. "There are many things that seep into your music and one of them is where you live", he later said. "I suddenly remembered the value of being somewhere serene and beautiful and getting inspired in that way."