Tame Impala played Riviera with Mini Mansions (pics / setlist)

photos by James Richards IV

Tame Impala @ Riviera Theatre, 5/15/2015

With his straggly hair and beard, and lean, barefoot frame, Parker still looks like the shaggy one-man-band auteur who emerged out of Australia in 2010 with densely packed, acid-saturated home-studio recordings. But when he stepped away from the armada of foot pedals arrayed in front of him and let the music breathe, his nasally falsetto vocals painted a different portrait: Kevin Parker, soul man.

On "Let it Happen," keyboards and a clipped groove dominated, a sleek electro-R&B track that wouldn't have sounded out of place on a Pharrell Williams record - at least at first. A midsection breakdown arrived, and then the main theme returned full force, this time with guitars and drums in rock rave-up mode. It was a show's worth of zigs, zags and cliff-hangers packed into seven-plus minutes of music, the kind of track that's normally saved for last. But Parker preferred to set the bar high from the get-go, as if daring himself and his five-piece band to surpass it.

Tame Impala's ambitious new album, Currents, is out in July and the band are not shy about playing new material on their current tour, clearly wanting folks to hear where they're going. That tour hit Riviera on May 15 with Mini Mansions and pictures/setlist from the show are in this post. More below...

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Mimi Mansions

Tame Impala

1. Intro
2. Let It Happen
3. Mind Mischief
4. It Is Not Meant to Be
5. Why Won't They Talk to Me?
6. Elephant
7. Be Above It
8. Oscilly
9. 'Cause I'm a Man
10. Alter Ego
11. Eventually
12. Why Won't You Make Up Your Mind?
13. Apocalypse Dreams

Encore:

14. Feels Like We Only Go Backwards
15. Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could Control