Release Date: October 5, 2012
Australian psych-rock outfit Tame Impala made waves with its throwback style of psychedelic music on their mellow debut, Innerspeaker, in 2010. Now, Tame Impala is laying into new, heavier territory with its second studio release, Lonerism.
Lonerism is like some weird trip. The whole album has an atmospheric low-fi touch, while still being well-produced. The music moves in on you and before you know it, your head is in the clouds.
The drums reverberate while astral synth leads launch into groovy breakdowns that bust out of nowhere. Sweeping over much of the album are flanging guitars that seem to swoosh over your head/ears giving the album a dreamy feeling that’s hard to wake up from.
One gripe listeners will have with Lonerism is that some points on the album blend together too well, making it hard to distinguish from track to track. The album is saturated in effects, but it’s a sound that if removed would take away from what Tame Impala does best.
“Nothing So Far Had Been Anything We Could Control” has flanging guitars that sound like surreal jet planes careening across a kaleidoscopic sky, like much of the album does, but is still a sweetly stellar track.
The tracks that stray from that signature sound stand out even more by contrast. “Elephant” has a fat, bluesy hook that builds into a sunny jam with a wet sounding synth lead. “Keep on Lying” falls apart in odd ways with delaying samples of voices/noises over a heavy fuzzed out guitar that smooths back into the main riff, a la “Interstellar Overdrive” by Pink Floyd.
Lonerism opens with the blasting “Be Above It,” which has a driving rhythm made from drums that thicken with noisy delay the track title uttered in loops (“Gotta be above it, gotta be above it, gotta be above it…” etc.) A warbling synth is laid across Parkers’ poppy vocals, which err more to the side of the Beach Boys or the Beatles, who both influence Tame Impala’s psychedelic overtones.
Front man Kevin Parker has a slow-moving, dream pop sensibility and a distorted guitar slung around his neck that he soaks in fantasy effects. Parkers’ sensitive vocals give the noisy psyche-rock vibe a soft twist, like a more spacey Pet Sounds (with fading outros to boot.)
One of the high points of Lonerism is “Music to Walk Home By,” and the pointed suggestion is worth following.
The driving rhythm and low-fi laser synth attacks blast alongside a euphoric jam that could be the soundtrack to a walk through one’s hometown.
Parkers’ dreamy vocals and solo piano on the final track “Suns Coming Up” come off like a Beatles B-Side that never fully formed and suddenly ceases with the slap of a delayed guitar that continues to play over odd samples of footsteps and water rolling in.The sky that was once cluttered with flanging jet planes clears away and the album leaves the listener with the rising sun over the horizon.
Lonerism is focused on introversion/isolation in cluttered world, but the final calm moments seem to offer an optimistic relief from that heavy trip. Tame Impala certainly employs a great number of effects, but Parker and folks don’t hide behind their pedals. As a result, Lonerism stands on its own as a fine work in the hall of psychedelia.
Tame Impala – LonerismTracklist:
- “Be Above It”
- “Endors Toi”
- “Apocalypse Dreams”
- “Mind Mischief”
- “Music To Walk Home By”
- “Why Won’t They Talk to Me”
- “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards”
- “Keep on Lying”
- “Elephant”
- “She Just Won’t Believe Me”
- “Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could Control”
- “Suns’s Coming Up”
