TAME IMPALA

Lonerism FICTION

Kevin Parker’s breakout 2012 album released as a triple LP set.

Drummer, singer and multi-instrumentalist Kevin Parker recorded Tame Impala’s second album largely solo at home in Perth, Australia. Compared to 2010’s Innerspeaker debut, there are more electronics and samples, and Parker sounds more confident, more in tune with his muse, and, by his own assessment, more fully immersed in the music. Much has been made of Lonerism’s psychedelic feel, but whereas 60s psychedelia expanded minds through a more demonstrative and outgoing use of sonic disorientation, Parker’s music doesn’t give up its secrets so readily. Although it has a muscularity and presence, once inside, the listener feels adrift in a kind of woozy, perfumed haze.

Be Above It starts the album in a way that’s both assertive and cryptic with a poppy incantation over a treated drum and voice loop, and some added electronic whoosh. There’s a historical link to the sort of lone exploration that Todd Rundgren pursued on Something/Anything and A Wizard, A True Star, and on Endors Toi, stylistic similarities in the songcraft, bubbling synths, and loopy guitar lines.

Parker’s voice evokes the yearning nasality of John Lennon with Beatles harmonies aplenty, particularly on Mind Mischief. There’s some pretty far-out stuff on offer: Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could Control runs through melodic verses, recorded conversations and an instrumental section with double helpings of phasing; Sun’s Coming Up starts as a fairly conventional piano ballad that cedes to a heavily wah-wah’d and tremolo guitar meditation and ends with heavily effected recordings made by the sea.

The highlight is the somewhat anomalous Elephant with its bass chug, strange descending chorus and wrong-footing double beat punctuations. It felt like an exciting signpost into even more individual territory, and footage of Tame Impala playing the song at Glastonbury in 2013 shows that this music translated well to a band performance Unfortunately, Parker has decided that he wants fans to hear the bonus demo tracks that bulk out this expanded, three-LP reissue before any journalist gets a chance to listen, so they remain a mystery at the time of writing.

As Tame Impala have become more popular, they’ve become smoother, more polished and more predictable. As a producer, Parker is in demand and much emulated. From transferring his idiosyncratic soundworld to fellow Australians Pond – for whom he used to drum – he’s worked with Lady Gaga, Gorillaz, even Kanye West. But while he couldn’t be foreverbound by this early style, Lonerism remains an enduring gem imbued with a magic that has largely been lost over the years.

THE LISTENER FEELS ADRIFT IN A WOOZY, PERFUMED HAZE.