Subscribe to the Dowsers Spotify account for all the best playlists from Tame Impala and more.Listeners across nearly every streaming service love putting together track-by-track comparisons meant to meticulously chart how one artist has influenced another. While the erudition displayed in these playlists is phenomenal, they almost always make for lousy listening. Thirty-four tracks bouncing between just Tame Impala and The Beatles gets really old really quick. I’m checking out after about six. What I’d rather hear is a playlist that maps out Tame Impala’s influences on a macro level, one that, in addition to The Beatles, spotlights Led Zeppelin, The Flaming Lips, and Air. After all, what makes Tame Impala unique isn’t the fact that they’re inspired by any one classic rock group, but that they manage to synthesize an absurdly diverse array of influences cutting across multiple genres and generations.
The biggest hit from Eric Church’s fifth album Mr. Misunderstood, “Record Year” continued the North Carolina native’s impressive run of singles topping the country radio charts. But it’s more than just a bittersweet breakup song, folding references to some of Church’s favorite music into a tale of getting over heartbreak with the help of a turntable. His heroes George Jones and Waylon Jennings get a namecheck, Willie Nelson’s landmark album Red Headed Stranger has a cameo, and progressive bluegrass cult heroes New Grass Revival get a shout out. Yet Church’s songs have always been rich with influences from outside of country, and James Brown and Stevie Wonder’s records get a spin as well.
Angel Olsens approach to rock—a little bit of folk, a little bit of fuzz, a whole lot of white-knuckle honesty—has made her one of its most exciting artists. But while the North Carolina-based crooners been at the vanguard of the indie since she first struck out on her own, the records that helped create her sound are the sorts of dusty albums that populate crate-diggers dreams. Her headiest songs are influenced by what she calls "blood harmonies," those chords that can only come from groups of vocalists who are somehow related, like The Everly Brothers, while her matter-of-fact poetry derives its influences from soul titans like Donny Hathaway and American bards like Bob Dylan.
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Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.
