Images by Angus Bell Young // Words by Froomes
Unfortunately, today’s review of last night’s Tame Impala show at Qudos Bank Arena is nothing of the sort. This is more of a prejudicial diary entry laden with personal anecdotes – an attempt to put into words the feeling, the significance, of seeing your favourite band play their first Sydney show in five years alongside a sold-out stadium of super fans.
I remember the first time I saw Tame Impala play, at Sydney’s Laneway Festival in 2017. They closed out the festival, playing as dusk turned to night. It’d been an illegally hot day, so their appearance on stage felt almost like a mirage. And just as I went to lie down on the grass to take it in, a former flame walked past me. I shot up and grabbed his attention. He was obviously cooked at this point, wandering around like the second coming of a radioactive Mr Burns. We hadn’t seen each other for about a year but I was still hung up. We lay down together, hands almost touching, and listened to ‘The Less I Know The Better’. He offered a gacked apology for ghosting me in between the dulcet tones of what would become my favourite song.
For many years after, listening to Tame Impala felt nostalgic. I couldn’t separate the songs from the moments they punctuated, at festivals, in cars, in my bedroom. But that’s the secret ingredient baked into every Tame Impala song. The lyrics speak in a language with which we’re all familiar, about people in our life we long for. There are no big dick-swing words, bar Posthumous Forgiveness (which was arguably last night’s most captivating song). Their full, fifteen-year discography reads like a laundry list of things you wish you’d said at the party the night before, written by a man with relatable regrets and a perfect ear.
But fuck! This isn’t meant to be a review of any of that. It’s meant to be a review of the Sydney leg of their ‘Rushium’ tour, as experienced in Section 5, Row A, Seat 102.
Securing a ticket was a Willy Wonka-level challenge. This was the hottest concert of 2020, 2021 and 2022 combined – with every COVID-induced cancellation adding to the folklore that this was gonna be a big one, boys. I risked it all by transferring a total stranger $320 for their electronic tickets. The feeling of scanning the ticket and getting through the box office unscathed? Exhilarating.
The first thing I noticed was the median age of the crowd. It was definitely 22, at most. My suspicions were confirmed when I got home and had a scroll through the Tame Impala Reddit thread, and came across a 15-year-old boy anxiously asking whether or not there will be drug users at the concert, because it was his first and he was scared about getting into an ‘altercation’.
He’s not silly for asking. The whole theme of the tour centred around the concept of ‘Rushium’ – a fictitious drug concocted by Kevin Parker that’s said to slow time down and incite a euphoric feeling in all those who consume 100g of it.
The bit kicked off the show, with a pleasant pharmaceutical representative welcoming us on the stage’s enormous screen to explain the side effects before rippling into a pixelated hallucination. Kevin and the band slinked onstage to rapturous hooting and hollering. It’s difficult to believe ‘One More Year’ – the first song on the setlist – was written before lockdowns and cancelled tours. It was a serendipitous acknowledgement of how long we’ve waited for their return to our city, the first they ever played outside of Perth.
The third song was for the looners. I have a theory that ‘Nangs’ is the song that lures tricksters and troublemakers into the Tame Impala universe before the rest of the discography proves that you can love getting on it and still have feelings.
The audience interaction was giving no thoughts, just vibes. Kevin asks how we’re going, and we scream back. He thanks us for coming, and we scream back. He doesn’t demand our attention, but we’re commanded no less, hushing for interludes and roaring back to life for Elephant.
The lighting at Tame Impala shows is notoriously out of this world. That’s another core memory I have from the Laneway show – it feels like purple. I’d heard that the light show on this tour was insane, and I’d seen it on Instagram stories, but I remained unprepared. A technicolour laserbeam moment left me lulled like a little baby tripping in a cot. To make lighting feel less like a gimmick and more like a ‘feeling’ is a testament to Kevin Parker’s singular vision, which was realised alongside Emmy Award-winning lighting designer Rob Sinclair.
If you were seated in the nosebleed section, you had little chance of seeing the band unadulterated – whenever they appeared on-screen, they were a rendition, obscured by colour and a drunk delay, always just out of reach. It’s sort of nice they stay that way. To somehow remain an enigma across a 15-year career is an achievement not many artists can lay claim to.
Trevor could never.
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