
Tame Impala - 'Innerspeaker' Album
Tame Impala is a psychedelic rock band of Kevin Parker from Perth, Australia signed to Modular Recordings. The band rose to prominence in 2010 with the release of its debut album Innerspeaker and received critical acclaim for its 2012 album Lonerism.
The image is an establishing shot of a forest, probably set in autumn because of the brown/orange colours in the trees.
The front cover is very conventional of psychedelic rock album covers as the majority of them, like this one, consists of real life imagery, in this case a forest or wilderness distorted in some way to create an optical illusion or in an attempt to create a new image entirely.
This can be similarly compared to 'The Soundcarriers' album,
'Harmonium', were the image has been cropped,
distorted and repeated to create something entirely new,
while Innerspeaker doesn't do this to the extent that
'Harmonium' have, both images have been manipulated
create 'an image from an image'. To focus the audience's
attention on the image, both the album cover and artist's
name have been reduced in size and placed in the two
top corners of the album cover. This is unconventional
of indie rock album covers as artists usually want
to be quickly recognised by fans.




The back cover of the album is
conventional, it contains a photo that I assume has been taken in roughly the same location as where the front cover photo was taken. This creates a theme for the album. The back-cover shows the
label logo, barcode and song list, this is conventional of a back cover. The font however used for the song list is different from the font on the front for the artist's name and album name. The font for the song list is very basic, unlike
the font used for the front which looks similar to that used in a science fiction film. While this this may seem unconventional and out of place from an album cover recognized in the mainstream, this is conventional for psychedelic rock album covers which conventionally develop strange and possibly confusing styles to visually resemble the style of music that they are creating. Similarly, 'Pearls Before Swine' released a 'Best Of' album which like 'Innerspeaker' has an inconsistent style.

The inconsistensy in style of the 'Innerspeaker' album is further evident on the inside of the album. The image used is far more distorted than the others as a reflection effect has been used to create the illusion of a river or lake. The colours evident are therefore a sky blue rather than the green and autumn red used on the front cover. However, certain aspects of the front cover have prevailed as the same font has been used for the artist name and album cover, therefore the digipack is evident of basic conventions such as font.
This mix match of styles and inconsistenceys appeal to the target audience as psychedelic rock is edident of the same themes. Psychedellic rock is filled with confusing and experimental sounds that are successfully suggested visually through the album cover.
Conventionally, Independent rock bands are heavily focused on the music rather than group or star persona, while mainstream artists such as Niki Minaj has created many personas in an attempt to communicate with her fans, Indipendent groups rarely integrate a star persona into there music or performance. Consequently, Innerspeaker is very conventional as it lacks the presence of any images/portraits of the group, therefore contributing little to a personification of the group.


Tame Impala's website is conventional of music group/artist websites through it's use of publicity, promotional ads,