Studio wizard Kevin Parker’s latest opus delivers his signature spaced-out sound across a dozen tracks of carefree, blistering pop music. John Earls takes delight in his mastery
First, the bad news. Kevin Parker hasn’t made the same sonic leap forward that he did between Innerspeaker and Lonerism, and then from Lonerism to Currents. That would have been pretty much impossible, given that Currents was one of the defining classic genre-mashing albums of the past decade, and it turns out Parker is but a mere mortal – a theme that recurs throughout The Slow Rush. The good news is, like Currents, Tame Impala’s first LP with a multi-word title is another fantastic album that, if you had to categorise it, is pop music at its core.
It’s been five years since Currents, but thankfully The Slow Rush doesn’t feel like an album that’s been overthought. That’s not to overlook the complexities in Parker’s production – it’s a marvel that only one person created the mixture of whomping bass and delicate keys in Is It True, the anthem that most obviously plays out Parker’s Daft Punk fantasies. But, mostly, these 12 songs sound like carefree, blistering pop music. Many other musicians claim they love a bit of everything, but few other than Parker are as adept at blending every modern technique and veteran craftsmanship into something as light and infectious as Lost In Yesterday.
Parker has long said he likes to think of people listening to his albums on headphones, and he’s become a festival headliner by doing so; it’s easy to picture the communal euphoria that a song as big and, in the best way, obvious as Instant Destiny will provoke at Tame Impala’s laser-strewn live shows for the album. This doesn’t mean Tame Impala has abandoned its stoner-rock roots altogether: Breathe Deeper may have a slick R&B sheen that Rihanna would kill for when she’s finally back in the studio, but there’s a sense of mischief to its wriggling topline that harks back to early singles such as Lucidity.
Where Currents was generally escapist hedonism, The Slow Rush is lyrically more thoughtful. Parker has got married in between the two records, and his own maturity appears a loose theme: the opening One More Year, Parker’s usually empathetic falsetto distorted into a forbidding warning of mortality, sets the tone for a rough narrative of time passing. There’s joy at what we’re allowed from life pretty soon – Instant Destiny is the second song – so that, by the final One More Hour, Tame Impala is back to celebration and filling your headphones with succour.
