How Hong Kong-bound Tame Impala became world’s hippest guitar band
Latest Australian music sensation have gone from cult heroes to media darlings in space of five years and three albums, and judging by how quickly Mong Kok gig sold out, it’s going to be huge
Hong Kong boasts strong ties with Australian pop – the city hosted Kylie Minogue’s first-ever live concert, INXS frontman Michael Hutchence grew up in Hong Kong and Air Supply come so often they might as well live in the city.
Now it’s the turn of the world’s hippest guitar band: Tame Impala play the MacPherson Stadium in Mong Kok on April 19, and if the speed with which tickets sold out, or the success of the band’s latest record or the reception they got at recent gigs are any gauge, it’s going to be huge.
Now promoting their platinum-selling album Currents, the psychedelic dreamers are the closest thing the world has to an underground rock phenomenon. Over the course of three albums and five years, they’ve gone from cult heroes to tabloid darlings, notching up top-five chart positions around the world and winning a Brit award in the UK and a Grammy nomination in the United States.
Not bad for a band whose only permanent member, multi-instrumental genius Kevin Parker, was on the brink of giving up when the call to greatness came.
“I was walking around university, the exam was in 20 minutes and I was meant to be studying but I was thinking about this call’’ he was expecting from record label Modular, Parker told Electronic Beats website. “Then five minutes before the exam I thought, ‘I better start walking to the exam’, and then the call came on the way there and I was like, ‘Sweet! I’m out!’”
