BeatRoute Magazine ON Edition - February 2020

MUSiC ARTIST INTERVIEW
statement, then releasing an answer that
goes even further, capable of really going
there. It’s a useful skill, evidence of an
understated confidence necessary for
trusting the outcome of one’s curiosity
that’s become foundational to his music.
Innerspeaker, the band’s 2010 critical
breakthrough, utilized the weight of
climactic, soaring riffs to sympathize with
the rigors of merely slogging your way
through ordinary life. His sophomore effort,
Lonerism (2012), saw Parker nudging his
aspirations larger, exhuming the textures of
70s synths to take a stab at pop splendor.
And 2015’s Currents refined his interest in
sanding down any lingering, discernable grit
from the project to produce a near-pristine,
airtight container of hyper-lush psych-pop.
Parker’s newest album, The Slow Rush,
is a sprawling inquisition into a sonic
environment Parker has been hinting
at for years, and has now finally given
himself the license to execute. “When I
actually felt like I wanted to make another
Tame Impala album, I had gotten so many
new perspectives on music that I realized
how much more I could be doing with
Tame Impala.”
“Everything I did was eyeopening,
so the goal
was to
kind of blow it open and embody a lot of
the qualities of people that I've worked
with in myself,” he remembers. “[Working
with] Travis Scott, I learned not to sweat
the small stuff, which helped me realize
that self-doubt doesn't get you anywhere,
[and] doesn't help anything or anyone.”
As a result, The Slow Rush is largely
ambitious—weirder, compelling, and frayed
at the edges. And still, specially crafted
for both the airwaves and the dancefloor.
Album opener “One More Year” finds
Parker gripping a mic stand with both
hands while dealing in a heady Baleric
melody—Parker’s own decadent take on
Screademelcia-era Madchester—that, inch
by inch, superimposes a metallic, galactic
melody towards an unhurried revelation,
declaring a short-term strategy for longlasting
love.
“Breathe Deeper” is a bouncy support
anthem, drenched in the, now, nostalgic,
spirit of peak chillwave, before collapsing
into an industrial, IDM-adjacent breakdown;
“Tomorrow’s Dust” plants a deliberately
disordered rhythm over a propulsive Latin
guitar riff; “It Is True” grinds its hips into
both a slice of dancehall and an identifiable
homage to 80s funk that even Prince might
appreciate; and “Glimmer” wraps itself
around the irresistibly pulsating panache
of shiny 90s euro-house, complete with a
spoken word intro.
Throughout all of it, Parker sounds welltravelled
because he is. Yet, still capable
of remembering to drop his anchor on the
shores of the clearly defined vista he’s built
around himself. But, as always, the album
reaches a little further.
Responding to a world that often feels
consumed by micro and macro fires, too
insurmountable to easily locate a site of
relief, there’s a new urgency to Parker’s
lyricism. It’s almost as if he’s working
double time, and against mounting
external forces, to validate the fact that
the seemingly mundane parts of life—bitesized
aspirations that often feel not only
unreachable, but unimportant; like trying
to atone with your parents (“Posthumous
Forgiveness”), or really and truly believing in
yourself (“Breathe Deeper”)—are worthy of
the time necessary to figure out.
It’s possible to imagine that when these
songs are heard under spindly, neon strobe
lights, or under a sea of confetti cannons
rivalling Beyoncé, that they might exist as
an affirmation that investigating the root of
the small stuff is mutually exclusive with all
the big stuff; that you can concurrently try
to save the world, while figuring out how to
save yourself in the process.
Speaking slowly and thinking carefully, he
pinpoints the foundation of this ethos with
a clear-headed self-description: “I’d like to
think that I’m one of the most empathetic
people I know. But I’m pretty sure that
there are people I know that think I have no
empathy. Which is kind of weird.”
He continues, acutely observant of his
own limitations. “I think to some people I can
come across quite cold because I've always
been quite a withdrawn person. Music is the
thing that I channel my emotions into the
world with, because I've never really been
good at doing it personally.”
“I enjoy the idea of seeing things from
other people's perspective because there’s
no more valuable trait than to see that the
way that you see things isn’t objective.”
Perhaps purposefully, the lines of his
protagonists are almost always undefined,
capable of taking on a character profile
selected solely by the listener. It’s possible
that this is the root of his empathy: In the
face of unrestricted and unusual levels of
success, removing yourself from the center
of your own party feels like an enduringly
selfless act.
“I want the best for Tame Impala.
It's bigger than me now. I just...feel
a sense of responsibility; not to
make it as big as it can be, but
to make it as whole as I can.
That's kind of my job.”
STAR
22 BEATROUTE FEBRUARY 2020