Pure Pop for Now People ca. A.D. 2016: Tame Impala’s “Disciples”

It’s past time I brought some music back to this blog.

My son performed a miracle this week. He introduced me to a tune written and recorded in the past couple of years that I cannot get enough of. Like the best of everything I encounter these days, Tame Impala’s “Disciples” has a retro feel. It’s easy to imagine discovering this on the radio in the mid-1970s while lazily turning the AM radio dial late at night, when you could get the good out-of-state stations with the DJs that played the really cool stuff those evil, unseen Powers That Be preferred you didn’t hear.

James was impressed by how much feeling was put into one minute and 48 seconds of music, as was I. “When I first heard this and it started fading out I screamed NO!” he said. “Don’t take this beautiful thing away!” Like Jimi Hendrix’s original “Little Wing,” much of this song’s power is in its dreamlike brevity. It’s there, and then it isn’t, leaving a sweet ache of a memory behind. 


I love the plaintive So much I want to tell you right at the fade. But, as with the friendship mourned in the lyrics, the song is done. Nothing left but the memory of a melody you wish had stuck around for one more verse.