Currents

The cover features an abstract image of swirling liquid in vivid colors — deep reds, electric purples, bright blues, and burnt oranges — suggesting paint being poured, a chemical reaction, a marble dissolving, or a psychedelic fluid experiment. The image is simultaneously beautiful and slightly unsettling, as if something solid is losing its form.

Robert Beatty, a Kentucky-based visual artist known for his retro-futuristic, psychedelic aesthetic, created the image using a combination of practical photography and digital manipulation. Beatty's visual style draws from vintage science fiction, 1970s airbrush art, analog synthesizer graphics, and the visual language of psychedelia. His work for Tame Impala fit perfectly with the project's sonic palette.

The concept of the image directly relates to the album's themes. Currents is about change — specifically, the kind of change that feels overwhelming, irreversible, and beyond one's control. Kevin Parker, Tame Impala's sole creative force, was going through a breakup and a period of artistic transformation (moving from the guitar-driven psychedelic rock of earlier albums toward synthesizer-heavy, pop-influenced production). The cover visualizes this: something solid becoming liquid, a form dissolving and reforming as something new.

The title Currents — suggesting both electrical currents and the flow of water — is visually represented in the cover's fluid, ever-changing imagery. The swirling colors suggest that the change is not necessarily destructive; it's transformative, and the result could be something beautiful. This optimistic undertone distinguishes the cover from similar images of dissolution — it's not chaos, it's metamorphosis.

The cover became one of the most recognized album images of the 2010s, appearing on t-shirts, phone cases, and dorm room walls worldwide. Robert Beatty's psychedelic-retro style influenced a wave of music-related visual art. The album itself was a commercial and critical success, and the cover's association with the Tame Impala aesthetic has made it a defining image of 2010s psychedelic pop.