Tame Impala - The Slow Rush

The Quietus

It took Kevin Parker five years of reclusive writing before The Slow Rush was ready for human consumption. His group Tame Impala started off at the dawn of the 2010s as a charming psych-revival curiosity, but second and third albums Lonerism and Currents saw the group slowly mutate into something far bigger; an escapist pop act capable of headlining festivals.

Notoriously, Parker is one of these musicians that spends literal years labouring over fine details to ensure everything is the best it can be. He rigorously considers every single drum sound, piano loop, and vocal texture, and pours unimaginable quantities of energy into the signature Tame Impala sound. Parker is clearly a talented producer, and has shown in the past that his musical graft often reaps satisfying melodies. It is this perfectionism that defines 2015’s smooth-but-insubstantial Currents, and new LP The Slow Rush is certainly cut from the same cloth.

So that begs the question; if Parker is such a perfectionist, how come all of his songs are fucking terrible?

Tame Impala frustrate throughout The Slow Rush. Whilst Parker’s talents as a producer certainly flicker throughout, his limitations as a songwriter prevent any songs on the record from really catching light at any point. The Slow Rush is background music, it’s supposed to bring good vibes but it dims every room that it is played in.

There are certainly signs of promise: the organ textures and sunken melodies of ‘Posthumous Forgiveness’ are enjoyable, and the zapping lounge-funk of ‘Lost in Yesterday’ kinda pops off in spite of Parker’s limitations as a frontman. The production on these two numbers is enjoyable, and harks back to the early parts of the 2010s, where Tame Impala records were never dull. However, these moments are fleeting and there can be no mistake about it. The Slow Rush is a record as dull as its name.

Indeed, there can be no question that Parker has many talents as a melodic voyager, a musician or a producer. However, for the most part, frustratingly, Parker’s waste of these talents is akin to Dorothea Tanning using her skill with a paintbrush to become an interior decorator.

‘One More Year’, the album’s opening crawl best encapsulates the frustration of the album. A relatively satisfying synth line and rippling non-lyrical vocals fill the intro, before Parker’s nasal voice wafts in and the track fills slowly with more layers that add very little. Often interesting musical ideas are quickly swamped by boring vocals, and fleeting grooves leave as quickly as they enter.

Parker’s voice and lyrics have always held back the interesting and transportative moments on Tame Impala records. However, it feels like on ‘One More Year’ and the rest of The Slow Rush, the voice is more irksome than ever before and the lyrics are a clumsy afterthought. There are no shortages of lyrical mis-steps.

“We’re stuck on a roller coaster going loopedy loop”, sings the nose of real life human adult Kevin Parker on ‘One More Year’. It’s strange that for someone that spends so much time working on fine details, the lyrics are of such a low quality that they actually stand out. As mid-album filler ‘Tomorrow’s Dust’ lumbers over, the Australian sounds like a primary school slam poet slinging a rhyming dictionary. He mumbles: “Sympathy for the fauna, fragile life in the sauna”. There’s a whole lot of nothing.

There should be more to admire about The Slow Rush. But ultimately it’s just so boring. Tracks like ‘It Might Be Time’ and ‘Instant Destiny’ typify this; Tame Impala have just become genreless vibe music, with very little to grasp onto besides terrible writing and the very occasional synth sound. Indeed, this progression from their early psychedelic daydreams into wallpaper music began on ‘Currents’, but at least the songs on that album developed. The songs lack the imagination of ‘Innerspeaker’, and the constant left turns of ‘Lonerism’, without finding anything of interest to replace them with.

For those that need a bit of background music The Slow Rush is a competent record, but it’s impossible to actively listen to it for a prolonged period of time without despairing. At least now that this is out, there probably won’t be another one for a few years.

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Pitchfork 80

On his fourth album, Kevin Parker takes a breath and eases into a smoother psychedelic sound. Even without the adrenaline-filled highs, the compositions are as rich and thoughtful as ever.

The Guardian 80

(Fiction)
Perth’s disco dork returns after a four-year hiatus with an album that finds existential meaning in genre-surfing dance music

Tame Impala, AKA 34-year-old Australian Kevin Parker, started out in 2010 as a home-recording, guitar-wielding psychedelic rocker, but 2015’s Currents cemented his metamorphosis into an arena-filling synth-psych act whose tunes are covered by Rihanna and Arctic Monkeys. Along the way, he has collaborated with Mark Ronson, Lady Gaga, Kanye West and Travis Scott and now professes to be influenced more by pop songwriter ubermensch Max Martin than 60s wigouts.

The Guardian 80

(Fiction)
Kevin Parker shifts further away from his psych rock roots, while pondering happiness and his continued relevance

Around the time of 2015’s Currents – the third Tame Impala album – mainman Kevin Parker described having an epiphany some time previously. Driving around Los Angeles on magic mushrooms and cocaine, he realised just how magnificent the Bee Gees sounded, emotionally and technically. Parker is an Australian man given to singing beatific, double-tracked harmonies in falsetto; he is also a studio nerd with a long and attentive study of psychedelia behind him. The sound of the Bee Gees on mushrooms insinuated itself into Parker’s work, culminating in a massive and deserved hit album.

Currents was an album all about transition, on which Parker disentangled himself, as gently as he could, from a relationship to begin anew. At the same time, this progenitor of the 00s revival in psychedelic rock was also outgrowing his early sound, a monomaniacal stoner guitar fuzz. Parker embraced the expansive possibilities of electronics, of the dancefloor, of popularity. The mainstream, it turned out, was in a similar headspace: riding an uptown funk renaissance, high on weird production and flirting shamelessly with soft rock.