Beyond his legions of dedicated fans, the name Kevin Parker may not be immediately recognisable, but this dextrously talented, multi-instrumentalist's artist identity of Tame Impala, has become synonymous with a modern strand of psychedelic indie, infused with elements of electronica and synth pop.
Originally from Perth, in Western Australia, Tame Impala attracted a strong homegrown crowd first, but it took a little longer for the rest of the world to pick up on the unique musical magic that Parker was conjuring.
Parker began working on the third Tame Impala album Currents three years before it finally saw the light of day, following the breakthrough success of his aptly titled previous album Lonerism. Its first song, Let it Happen established the LP's themes of transition - both lyrically and musically.
Article continues below“I think most of that song was put together at different times,” Parker told Under the Radar in 2015.
“When I was on tour, actually. I remember it came to me, I think I was walking to my hotel room in Oklahoma. And then the chorus, I was at a festival in Hungary or Turkey. And then the midsection, the jam bit, I was on a train. I had my laptop on a train in France, going to Toulouse. With that song, one thing led to another. I was just jamming by myself in the way I do, and I put it on a loop to see what sounds cool. I just see where it takes me”
As a live entity (with help from other musicians), Tame Impala could easily be the band's name, but in the studio, Parker was (and is) lord and master of his own domain - taking on all composition, recording and production duties himself. Sometimes, however, he might call upon the talents of other individuals to undertake processes such as mixing.
As its lead single, Let It Happen quickly became one of the most successful tracks from Currents, winning the APRA award (an Australian award for excellence in songwriting and composition) for the song of the year back in 2016.
Lyrically, the song was purposefully ambiguous. “There’s this part at the end where I’m singing through this keyboard sampler thing, almost like a vocoder but not really. And the first take I did, I was just singing gibberish and making sounds with my mouth just to test it out,” Parker told Under the Radar.
“I didn’t even know what I was saying. I was saying words and stringing sentences together that weren’t really words. I left that for months and months, always planning to go back and re-record it with real lyrics. And I only did it a few days ago, a week before mastering. I’m totally contradicting what I said before, but I couldn’t get back the same groove I did when I was speaking in tongues. So I had to make the decision, like, ‘I’ll just leave the speaking in tongues version on the album'.”
Dissecting Let It Happen musically must begin with highlighting the hypnotically repeated note C#.
Its presence as a single note, played in an almost funk-based rhythm, is one of the common threads throughout the course of the song, which is initiated from the very beginning.
Moreover, the harmony shifts around the C#, as heard in the chords which make up the chorus, although in a slightly less obvious twist, Parker employs three bar phrases, which in itself creates a slightly unsettled form.
Chordally speaking, the opening section relies upon the following chords; A major and F# minor (7), for a bar each, followed by G#(sus4) for 2 beats, before resolving to G# major.
The sequence changes slightly on its repeat, with the final chord becoming G# minor. It's also interesting to note the presence of the 7th, on the chord of F#m, as this is supplied in the background, by the synth pad texture.
We've already mentioned the irrepressible nature of the repeated C#, which is at the forefront of the mix, and appears to be played on guitar with added distortion.
Residing alongside this is a synthetic texture, and notably a bending of the note C# at the end of each third bar, shifting the C# down to a C natural.
The eclectic fusion of instrumentation that has become Tame Impala's calling card, is part and parcel of his recognisable sound. It's difficult to dissect exactly which guitar equipment has been used on this track, but we know that Parker has a modified Fender Stratocaster in his arsenal, along with a Vox AC30 amp, Dunlop JDF2 Fuzz Face pedal and Boss BD-2 Blues Driver pedal.
Any of these elements, or even a sum, could be responsible for the overdriven nature of the repeated C#.
Alongside the guitar elements, this album made notable use of two synthesizers, both of which provide unique vintage identities.
It's fairly likely that the Roland Juno-106, noted as one of Kevin's favourite synths, is responsible for the pad-like and chordal elements, although he is also the owner and user of the lesser known Realistic Concertmate MG-1 synthesizer.
Originally produced by Moog Music for Tandy (Radio Shack in the US), the MG-1 was an entry-level monophonic analog subtractive synthesizer, which offered all of Moog’s qualities, but at a mass-market price, and more readily available at music stores.
It wasn't enormously successful, hence it became a cheap secondhand option, which has now become an underrated classic, thanks in part to its use by artists such as Tame Impala.
As it feels appropriate to describe the opening of the song as the chorus (as it contains the repeated line ‘let it happen’) the verse section feels more subdued by comparison.
The verse adopts a more traditional 4-bar form, although there is further ambiguity, due to twists and turns in the synth pad harmony.
The verse starts with a chord of D# minor, for a bar, followed by a chord of B major, also for a whole bar. We then hear a chord of C# major, which seems to be held for two bars, although the bass moves in the second bar, creating a harmony of C#/F#. In guitar circles, this chord could also be described as F# Maj9 (omit3) - it just depends on your preference, which we tend to think depends on how your harmonic brain works!
This sequence repeats, but changes slightly when we hear the third chord, with a bass drop to an F natural (more accurately described as E# in this setting, due to enharmonic transposition), before rising to F#, as before.
Given the relatively simplistic harmony within this song, its development is fairly reliant upon builds in the arrangement and production, in common with so many other contemporary songs.
When the chorus returns, Parker includes numerous embellishments which change over time. These include rising scalic passages in the synth parts, with new riff-based material in the guitar parts, as we head toward the end of the song. It all adds to a sense that the song’s cauldron of elements are bubbling up, particularly as the album version of this song extends to nearly 8 minutes.
But, as we’re fond of asking our friends over at Prog Magazine, does this lengthy, oddly-arranged song count as ‘prog’?
In Kevin Parker’s eyes, absolutely.
“I guess, actually, Let It Happen is prog in its purest form. I stand by that one as decidedly progressive,” Parker told The Skinny.
“When I was writing it, I got the sense that… you know, like you’re on a train? There’s different scenery that you go through. A city, then the middle is some weird tunnel, and you come out the other end and you’re in the country. It has that landscape, you know? That must have something to do with the essence of prog?”
One much discussed production technique, which becomes a particular feature later in the song, is the ‘glitching’, which is designed to sound a little bit like a skipping, scratched CD - not something we have to worry about in 2026.
While it's unclear exactly which method he employed to create this effect, it is achievable through a number of different production techniques, all of which can result in the exact same effect.
Firstly, there are glitch plugins, such as iZotope’s Stutter Edit 2 which make light work of creating glitch-style repeats, which might have previously been meticulously edited manually, which is of course another option.
It's also possible that the glitch elements were triggered or sequenced manually, using sampling software, although this method would require a large degree of preparatory programming.
Let It Happen is an excellent example of a song which demonstrates how much creativity you can unlock with just a little equipment, the spark of an idea, and a whole lot of ingenuity.
For Parker, being bound by genre isn't a concern. Instead, he lets his ideas develop and grow organically. Let It Happen then could be said to be a statement of creative philosophy, as well as one of his most spellbinding pieces of music.
“You work on something for so long, and you listen to it and you get so involved in a different realm of the music that you lose all perspective of what it sounds like to hear it for the first time and what it will sound like to other people and what they think it will sound like,” Parker related to Under the Radar. “For me, by the time I’m finished with an album I have absolutely no idea what it sounds like. I have no idea what genre it is. I have no idea what people will say it sounds like or what category it will be put in. To me, it sounds totally different from anything ever."
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