by MITCHELL COTE
Staff Writer
Tame Impala album covers always communicate some big theme it showcases. Lonerism shows us the first-person view of an isolated person, separated by a gate from average life. Currents, an album about change, shows a perfectly parallel group of lines irreversibly changed by a giant metal ball. And their latest, The Slow Rush, has a touched-up picture of a Kolmanskop house – a monument to the fact that, in the words of philosophers J. Flansburgh and Linnell, “Time is marching on.” And indeed, time, the lack of it, looking back, and ultimately looking forward are big themes frontman Kevin Parker seeks to touch on with this new album.
Music-wise, Parker’s ponderings are propped up with instrumentals that feel like they’d not seem out of place at either a 70’s yacht party or a 90’s dance floor. This seemingly-incongruous mix of styles works at the end of the day – and actually fits with the theme, making The Slow Rush sound like an album that belongs to no decade. On the topic of the lyrics – well, yet again, it seems to mainly focus on time. From “One More Year” to the epic closer “One More Hour”, Kevin runs the gamut of time-related ideas. Bemoaning all the time he lost with his father when he died of cancer in 2009? Reminding us not to get too bogged down in the past, lest it becomes everything we think about? Facing the fact that he’s growing older and losing his mojo? No stone in the hourglass is left unturned on this album.
In short, if you were expecting Tame Impala to hit this album out of the ballpark, then you will not be surprised. Although some old Tame Impala fans may bemoan the fact that Tame Impala well and truly seems to be lost to the mainstream with this album, it’s really a win for everyone. Although the songs may be a little long for the radio, the shorter ones, like “Instant Destiny” and “Is It True” – which are still just as good – are almost guaranteed to show up somewhere and get even more people hooked on the sounds that come out of the Fremantle studios of Kevin Parker. And at the end of the day, there’s nothing wrong with that.