My opinions about music are usually pretty cut and dry. I either like the sound or I don't. I either want to keep listening or never hear it again. So, when an album like Australian psychedelic rock outfit Tame Impala's Innerspeaker comes across my desk I find it more than a bit confounding. It's not a bad album by any stretch. I even struggle to point out a single bad song on the entire disc. The problem is that absolutely none of it sounds particularly fresh but none of it really feels like a well-read throwback, either.

That seems to be the issue I have with a lot of retro-style music being produced today. I'm definitely not one to dismiss an album just because the music on it isn't something completely new and inventive. There are a lot of great records that consist almost entirely of music from a bygone era, i.e. Beck's Midnite Vultures or Koop's Koop Island. What sets those successful throwbacks apart from their merely forgettable contemporaries is that they put a new twist on those old sounds. Beck may dig into deep stacks of 70's vinyl but he still has the artistry to augment all that funk and soul with some modern electronic dissonance.

Tame Impala mostly forgo this process of modernizing the concepts they pilfer from the tie-dye end of the 60's. Aside from the opening track on Innerspeaker, "It's Not Meant To Be", most of the album consists of songs that could have appeared on a Strawberry Alarm Clock record unaltered. It's especially distracting to hear crisp, clear, thoroughly 21st century vocals over purposely fuzzy instrumentation. It's artificial in all of the worst ways, which again is a shame considering that it's all very competently composed and performed.

There must be a context in which Innerspeaker would work, I just haven't found it yet. I suppose if you're an insatiable fan of psychedelic rock you'll adore this album but it certainly won't cause you to push aside your favorite records from long, long ago. Even then, you might be annoyed by the album's abrupt shift to noodling prog rock toward the middle and nonplussed by the lazy blues rock following shortly thereafter. And don't even get me started about the ill-fitting synthesizer sounds on the closing track "I Don't Really Mind". I'd ask what the boys in Tame Impala were smoking when they decided to add that little flourish but the question seems rather unnecessary given what precedes it.

Ultimately, Innerspeaker sounds like somebody's favorite local band given the album they weren't really ready to make. The lysergic melodies and spacey vocals feel undercooked while the occasional genre tangents are unnecessary and even distracting. It's not a bad record for fans of psychedelia but it also has no business being called modern indie rock.