Tame Impala – Brixton Academy – 30th October 2012

Tame Impala beam down to Brixton Academy for a gig so hotly anticipated that you could almost get high on the atmosphere alone. However, before we get too carried away a downer appears in the shape of Young Dreams from Norway.

Young Dreams are a bunch of Stone Roses wannabees who are really gutted that they were born too late to participate in the late 1980s baggy era. No matter – they’ll just pretend that it’s happening now! The vocals are at times appallingly off-key (sound familiar?) and the guitarist’s chops aren’t quite sufficient for what he’s trying to achieve. Much room for improvement.

After that, some kind of musical miracle is needed, and it’s at least partially delivered by The Amazing (terrible name – virtually begging for a critical kicking!). This lot have decided to be Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, and they make a pretty good fist of it. The emphasis is very much on the ‘Young’ part of the above partnership, and the songs are almost worthy of young Neil himself, as are the lengthy guitar solos. A good effort.

Which brings us to Tame Impala, who are probably the most convincing proponents of psych rock since the 1970s heyday of Hawkwind, or possibly Secret Machines around the time of their first album. They certainly seem to mean it maaaaan, but what is it precisely that they mean? A listen to current album Lonerism would seem to suggest that main Impala Kevin Parker is drowning in a sea of weed induced paranoia.

The setlist is slightly weighted in favour of Lonerism (6 from Innerspeaker, 7 from Lonerism) and it’s a pretty flawless gig. They’re possibly not the most engaging band visually, but frankly they don’t need to be. The music is more than capable of taking you somewhere else entirely, and the doodly green laser backdrop only helps. It Is Not Meant To Be and Lucidity rock like riff-driven muthas and Elephant lumbers and lurches like a lumbery lurchy thing. As a reward for being good we get an encore of Half Full Glass Of Wine from the first EP. If the song had been on Lonerism the glass would have been half empty.