Metascore
84

Universal acclaim - based on 38 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 33 out of 38
  2. Negative: 0 out of 38
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  1. Jul 20, 2015
    60
    Currents details a painful rebirth, but you’d never guess as much.
  2. Jul 16, 2015
    60
    While Currents would have made a decent Kevin Parker solo album, people coming to the album and expecting to hear the Tame Impala they are used to will most likely end up quite disappointed.
  3. Jul 15, 2015
    60
    It’s reductive and doesn’t help really anyone by saying the hooks just aren’t there on the level they used to be, but it’s telling that I searched the rest of Currents in vain for anything as immediate as the crashing waterfall of multitracked vocals on the chorus to “The Moment.”
  4. Jul 13, 2015
    40
    The most frustrating thing about Currents is that, for probably the first time, it seems like Parker is writing songs that would be pretty decent and probably interesting if he freed them from this musty aesthetic and gave them room to express themselves.
  5. 60
    While copious application of phasing offers a link to Tame Impala’s psychedelic roots, the absence of guitar wig-outs may disappoint some fans.
User Score
8.8

Universal acclaim- based on 601 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Negative: 19 out of 601
  1. Jul 22, 2015
    10
    The funny thing with most of the nay-sayers of this record is that they say that Currents is far removed from the psych-pop/rock of the firstThe funny thing with most of the nay-sayers of this record is that they say that Currents is far removed from the psych-pop/rock of the first two records and that surely Kevin Parker (KP) knew he would piss off some their hardcore fans but I personally feel that this record feels like the most natural progression of Tame Impala.

    Inner Speaker, the first record, was a pure psych-pop/rock record but even then you could already tell that KP had a thing for pop melodies and writing catchy songs. Lonerism, their second record, already took quite a bit of the psych out but there was still enough of it to sooth the psych fans.

    Currents takes pretty much all the psych out of Tame Impala and leaves us with one of the best pop records in a long while and KP wanted that exactly. It wasn't a decision to cash in or to change direction but something he's been working towards with the two previous records.

    But KP says it best on the final track of the record itself:

    "I can just hear them now
    "How could you let us down?"
    But they don't know what I found
    Or see it from this way around
    Feeling it overtake
    All that I used to hate

    Finally taking flight
    I know you don't think it's right
    I know that you think it's fake
    Maybe fake's what I like"

    Deal with it kids!!
    Full Review »
  2. Jul 17, 2015
    10
    although I love Lonerism, can't say I miss their guitars here. just in love with the new direction. best album of the year and totally analthough I love Lonerism, can't say I miss their guitars here. just in love with the new direction. best album of the year and totally an audiophile's wet dream. Full Review »
  3. Jul 18, 2015
    4
    I've always had a kind of love/hate opinion of this band. The bubble wrapped psych pop of their last two albums, which sounds identical to theI've always had a kind of love/hate opinion of this band. The bubble wrapped psych pop of their last two albums, which sounds identical to the beatles, has fit happily inside my guilty pleasures cabinet. Unfortunately this time around, the tracks are bad, often embarrassing. "Past Life" is an awful song featuring a sleazy, modulated vocal monologue in a soup of poorly auto-tuned songs (They don't even bother cleaning up the vocals by the time Love/Paranoia comes around). Throughout, his dry falsetto has lost any sense of personality or emotion. Hiccuping - track-skipping effects like on the first two tracks seem to try and warp the space around these soulless tunes add some texture.

    A lot of tracks repeat the trick of dazzling you with some bite-size soaring hook only to repeat it a bunch of times until it's ridden into the ground.. kinda like slowly drinking a can of sugar-free orange soda. That aftertaste just keeps ruining whatever good ideas are here (and there are a few).

    The aesthetic is not the psych pop of yesteryear, rather it's this kind of shoegazy-lazy-schmaltzy-glitzy contemporary electro-indie-dance stuff that's humiliating to try and dance along to. Caribou did it too, Panda Bear did it too - I still like all these bands but it's getting to that point in the relationship where i'm doing a lot of rationalizing just to keep things going. Could be I'm just not on the same drugs they are.
    Full Review »