Innerspeaker by Tame Impala

From the Vines to Wolfmother to Jet, recent Aussie rock exports have been painfully indebted to arena rock-- quick to recycle a sound but rarely succeeding in revitalizing it. Perth three-piece Tame Impala play with some of the ingredients of arena rock as well but do so in aid of more leftfield, organic sounds and interesting excursions. The result is a cleanly executed and frequently dazzling debut: Innerspeaker is a psychedelia-heavy outing that toys with paisley pop, stoner vibes, and an expansive array of swirling guitars.

On first inspection, Perth based trio Tame Impala look like any other stereotypical Australian rock and roll outfit; ballsy, fresh and with bags full of attitude no doubt gleaned from studying the more traditional musical exports from across the seas. In part, that theory would be correct. However, Tame Impala aren't your stereotypical 21st Century band by any stretch of the imagination. While they've obviously taken several steps back in time through the annals of rock and its forebearers, their lineage owes more to a time when psychedelia ruled the airwaves and any concept of heavy, let alone noise rock, was a mere embryonic twinkle in its LSD-guzzling parents eyes.

The problem is, they end up with an inordinate amount of half-baked gobbledygook to get there. A worrying number of songs on Innerspeaker, while aesthetically pleasing, are pretty hard to pay attention to.