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Jul 03, 2015 Tame Impala By Christopher Roberts Photography by Shervin Lainez

Tame Impala are on the cover of Under the Radar‘s current print magazine, which is still on newsstands now. As the July 17 release date for Tame Impala‘s new album, Currents, is inching closer we have now posted the in-depth cover story to our website and you can read it here. And we have also posted a bonus Q&A containing extra parts of the interview and you can read that here. It was the first interview that Tame Impala frontman Kevin Parker granted to discuss Currents, which he was putting the finishing touches on when the interview was conducted by our writer Matt Fink.

“I think this album without a doubt is my most musically diverse one,” Parker promises in our interview.

“By the time I’m finished with an album I have absolutely no idea what it sounds like,” Parker also admits. “I have no idea what genre it is. I have no idea what people will say it sounds like or what category it will be put in.”

The cover story goes in-depth into the creation of Currents, Parker’s music school days and the initial formation of Tame Impala, and Parker’s intense perfectionism. “If it’s not the first vocal take, then it’s the 600th, and I literally went over into four digits! In the recording program I use, it counts the takes you do. It will say ‘18 audio’ or ‘18 vocal one.’ And I looked back, and it was like 1,003 for this one track!” reveals Parker, laughing.

“People who want to live like rock stars can if they want. It’s really up to you. If you want to spend $2 million on an album and fly out to different studios and do lines of coke off prostitutes’ tits, you can do that. If you want groupies, you could have that, too. I guess I was too discerning about myself,” Parker also jokes in the article.

The bonus Q&A with Parker features sections of the interview not included in the main cover story. In this interview he talks more about the recording of Currents and discusses the inspiration behind specific songs on the album. “I’m really putting myself out there vocally more than I have before. I usually bury my vocals and sing quite ethereally and stick in a laser beam melody washed in reverb,” says Parker in the bonus Q&A.

Shervin Iainez photographed Parker for the cover exclusively for Under the Radar in New York.

Read the main Tame Impala cover story here.

Read the bonus Q&A interview with Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker here.

Below again is the “Currents in the Making” short behind-the-scenes video about the creation of Currents, which we posted yesterday. And if you still want to buy the print version of the full Tame Impala issue then you can do that here (and you can subscribe here).