INTERVIEW: Tame Impala

Tame Impala are without a doubt the hottest act in Australia at the moment. They've skyrocketed to the top of the 'will be huge in 2009' list in a matter of a couple months. They have only released an EP titled 'Antares Mira Sun' so far. Nevertheless on top of the many festival performances, they've already support the likes of The Black Keys, Yeasayer and even MGMT on their tours in Australia. Also, they are about to embark on a mini tour of the UK followed by their own headline tour of Australia. These guys are busy boys, trying to spread their music across the world and what sweet music it is. Music universe are big big fans of these boys.

Music Universe (MU) caught up with them recently to ask them a few questions before they hit the stage at The Melbourne Zoo as part of the 'Roar Sounds' festival. Here's what Tame Impala (TI) had to say when posed a couple of odd animal related questions.

MU: If an animal escaped the zoo and ended up wanting to join your band, which kind of animal would you let join and why?
TI: "A sloth. The fastest they can move is 1 metre a minute, so it would be such an achievement that it made it out of the zoo. Also it would make the rest of us look more active on stage. Either that or people would just get confused as to which one is me and which one is the sloth, which would be hilarious and awesome."

MU: Picture your music in the background of a movie scene, what would be happening in the scene?
TI: "A montage of a hermit crab that gets to be a human for a day, so long as no one introduces him to alcohol or fast food or casinos at any point in the montage. "

MU: If you had to be confined to a particular enclosure at the zoo, which would it be?
TI: "The ape enclosure so I could just throw poo at passing visitors and get away with it."

MU: Have you ever drunk Billy Madison levels of booze and seen hallucinations of penguins? If not, what hallucinations are your most fond memories?
TI: "Hallucinatory memories aren't necessarily fond ones but once I saw a giant preying mantis with the head of a fly and he was grinning at me and every time I blinked he turned back into a tree branch."

MU: Of all the animals that are now extinct, which one would you be happy to mate with to procreate?
TI: "A velociraptor duhh."

MU: Why did the chicken cross the road?
TI: "She was just chilling out by the side of the road one day and the Earth started moving from under her, she merely had to start moving her feet to keep from falling over and by the time the road had moved the whole way under."

The Tame Impala boys also shed some light on details of the release of their debut album. All they could tell us was that everything is kinda up in the air at the moment, but that it will probably be a triple album. We can only hope this to be true.

It was an absolute pleasure interviewing these boys and we would like to finally make one thing clear - if there's only one new band you have to know about this year, it's this band, TAME IMPALA.

Tame Impala + Eddy Current Suppression Ring
Thursday 19th Feb
The Melbourne Zoo
www.zoo.org.au/Melbourne/Roar_Sounds
www.tameimpala.com