Track Of The Day: Tame Impala - "Elephant"

Last year, I made the mistake of being late on The War on Drugs. I had heard the buzz that was building around them, but for whatever reason, it took me way too long to give them a shot and realize how good they were. It happens, and believe me, it will happen again. Case in point: Tame Impala. Back in 2010, I had several friends tell me I should check out their debut, Innerspeaker.  I foolishly ignored these suggestions and went on like a damn fool for almost two years.

Thankfully, I was going through my rounds of song submissions yesterday, and stumbled upon the newest Tame Impala track, "Elephant."  And whoa, do I ever owe my readers a huge apology.  While I still haven't spun Innerspeaker (a mistake I plan to correct real soon), based off of "Elephant" alone, Tame Impala has just shot to the top of my "bands to be obsessed with" radar.

A vicious bass line (guitar simulating a bass?) blows through the speakers all the way through "Elephant."  Unlike the one note, look-how-loud-we-are music of Sleigh Bells, Tame Impala proves they can be effective from every sonic angle.  Behind the bombastic bass, layer upon layer of sounds are developing, some subtle, some placed to perk up the ears, all of it stomping along to lyrics that can groove, dissolve into distortion, or just perfectly capture that rare essence of unforced cool.  A mind-bending breakdown around the 1:13 mark, ushered in by the guiding lyric "here he comes" takes what would be a great song into the discussion for song of the year.