Live music review: Tame Impala played Houston’s White Oak Music Hall Monday

Today’s guest post is from Houston writer Katie Sullivan and concert photographer, Karolina Cantu. Since The Cosmic Clash was unable to provide coverage of the Tame Impala performance at Germania Amphitheater in Austin Sunday, we’re thankful for this photo / writer duo for stepping up and providing immediate, timely and frankly pleasurable-to-read coverage to our audience.

Looking out on the White Oak Music Hall lawn on Monday, you would never guess that Houston was still reeling from tragedy.

Tame Impala took the stage just three days after the mass-casualty event at Astroworld, where eight victims all younger than 30 lost their lives during a chaotic set from headliner Travis Scott. But in spite of being one the ten deadliest concerts in U.S. history, attendees for the sold-out show remained unfazed. Fans of Tame Impala milled around mostly mask-less, sucking in White Claws and weed, unwilling to let a little senseless death get in the way of a good time.

Opener Sudan Archives warmed up the crowd with her mind-bending violin, a seemingly effortless array of loop-pedaled riffs that resisted genre-fication. Her velvety, complex arrangements like “Nont for Sale” and “Confessions” oozed into the audience with otherworldly bobbing bass beats and experimental strings, accented with mysticism underneath the rising crescent moon.

But everyone was there for the “time therapy treatment” provided by Tame Impala’s Slow Rush tour, a two-hour reverberation of lights, sounds, and vibes with the help of “Rushium,” the mock pharmaceutical brain child of Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker.  Set opener “One More Year” established the tone of the show, a hazy midtempo reflection set to reverberating white lights. That tone would remain for the bulk of the set, with Tame Impala jamming through song after song like a 21st century Grateful Dead forged in the digital age.

Parker only briefly paused the show with a cursory response to the Astroworld tragedy: the classic “my heart breaks for Houston” line that we hear after every disaster, natural or otherwise. But there were moments when the music spoke better than a handful of platitudes could. The song “Posthumous Forgiveness,” an elegy to Parker’s problematic father, mused with lyrics that reminded us of life’s sometimes cruel and senseless fates:

I always thought heroes stayed close

Whenever troubled times arose

I didn’t know, ain’t always how it goes

Parker’s desire to forgive his father, in spite of the man’s cliche failures, offered us a gracious way to approach some of humanity’s more recent deadly failures.

Tame Impala was at its best when it served up grittier, guitar rock. The throaty, mid-set “Elephant” was a vitalizing favorite, ripping through the audience with its signature distortions. The song was a welcome diversion from hit after hit of the kaleidoscopic psychedelia that Tame Impala is known for.

Parker cracked his beer before the encore and obliged the crowd when they egged him on to chug it. But swimming in beer swill didn’t stop him from delivering the rousing banger “The Less I Know the Better” and the feel-good closer “One More Hour,” all to cool blue lights and a shower of confetti.

All photos: Karolina Cantu. Special thanks to White Oak Music Hall.

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