Today, Tame Impala’s second album—Lonerism—celebrates ten years. Though I wasn’t a fan of the band at first listen, Tame Impala’s music and specifically this album have had a huge impact on the way I view music and the music I listen to now.
Lonerism begins with a simple loop of Parker whispering “Gotta be above it” while drums are banging noisily in the background, occasionally interrupted by a vibrating synth. The album continues with similar sounds in a more structured style while retaining spacey and dreamy elements.
Tame Impala is a psychedelic/pop project headed by singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Keven Parker. Lonerism is the second of Parker’s four albums and has a unique dreamy/nostalgic sound created using 80’s synthesizers and an obnoxious amount of guitar pedals.
Parker is the workhorse behind what is essentially a one-man-band. He wrote, played and produced almost all of the music on Lonerism with the exception of “Apocalypse Dreams” and “Elephant”. Parker’s friend and bandmate Jay Watson played drums on both tracks and co-wrote “Elephant.” The songs are performed live with Parker’s longtime friends/bandmates.
Lonerism is an important album because of its influence on today’s music as well as its ability to open the minds of music listeners to new sounds. The album bridges the gap between psychedelic rock and pop in a way that draws you in and allows you to forget any preconceived notions about genres. Parker’s first album, Innerspeaker, is very psychedelic while his third album Currents, ventures closer to pop and Lonerism fits between nicely.
Though Parker is mostly known for his unique sound he also shows his lyrical ability throughout the album. Some lines that stick out are: “Are you too terrified to try your best?” / “He broke the mirrors off his Cadillac, ’cause he doesn’t like it lookin’ like he looks back” / “One day I’ll be a star and they’ll be sorry.”
Parker layered 80’s synths to experiment with sounds that can be associated with old or cheesy music and tastefully used them to create a modern sound. The synth that stands out on this album is the Juno 106—a polyphonic, 6 voice synth released by Roland in 1982. On his guitars he used phaser pedals, vibrato, overdrive/distortion, delay and reverb—matching the nostalgia of the synths. Parker also double tracks his voice and uses a lot of reverb and delay on his vocals. His voice is often compared to John Lennon.
In the background Parker plays blown out and saturated drums throughout the majority of the album filling fills with fills. Parker is a drumming enthusiast and spends a tremendous amount of time perfecting the percussion side of his music. In an interview he said that the drumming style on Lonerism was inspired by The Flaming Lips song, “Race for the Prize.”
When looking back at the album today, Parker wrote, “Lonerism is 10 years old today. Difficult to sum up what the album means to me at this point. It was a pretty special time for me making the music (it wasn’t an album yet at that point). In a way it’s when I truly discovered myself as an artist. Coming off the back of Innerspeaker I had this new sense of purpose…calling… whatever you want to call it. I had finally given myself permission to let music take over my being completely… to become totally immersed in my own world of recording music. So I had this new sense of creative freedom. I felt free to be ambitious, weird, pop, experimental, whatever, and didn’t feel judged because I was finally just doing it for myself and believed in myself. For the most part anyway… of course the day came to release it and it all came crashing down and I thought the album sucked and couldn’t even imagine people enjoying it. As it turns out I was wrong… the album dropped and exceeded all my expectations and my life changed massively again, and I slowly realised the music was pretty good, again, which gave me a new sense of purpose, and the cycle starts again….”
Tame Impala’s sound has evolved a lot over the years and Parker continues to make great music. Lonerism will always stand out as one of my all time favourites.