Tame Impala Lonerism: An Album a Day

An Album A Day is posted 5 days a week, Monday-Friday

    Today I am reviewing an album I had recommended to me by a friend of mine, Lonerism by Tame Impala. The recommender of this album said that this is one of his favorite modern album, and given that he generally has pretty good taste in music I decided to give it a listen. Now I’ve heard of Tame Impala before, but I’ve never heard any of their music. My initial thinking with this band is that they would be somewhere in the ballpark of bands like Arctic Monkeys, The Black Keys or Wolfmother, which wasn’t a completely wrong assumption.

    First things first, Tame Impala are a band in the same sense as Nine Inch Nails; one guy writes and records everything and then gets other musicians together to tour. In this case that one guy is Kevin Parker, a multi instrumentalist contrarian who has an affinity for the music of the 60s and 70s as well as modern pop music. This album shows off all of those interests as well as some downright dirty guitar playing at times.

    Apparently their first album was a much more straightforward rock album, at least in Parker’s mind and he wanted to experiment with their follow up. He even stated that he got bored messing with guitar sounds after the first album and became inspired to work with vintage synthesizers for the sound of Lonerism. On top of that he wanted to have the music wash over the listener rather than striking out the way it had on the first album.

    These desires mixed with a love for pop melodies is what spawned the half dream pop half garage rock album that is Lonerism. Some of the stand out tracks on this album are Endors Toi and Elephant. Endors Toi caught my attention at first because of the main synth line throughout the song sounding like a combination of Free Bird and the Metroid Theme. The other thing that caught me is the fuzzy guitar solo towards the end of the track that differentiates it from the rest of the album.

    Elephant is the track that made me realize I had heard one song from Tame Impala before, and this is definitely my favorite track on the album. As I haven’t listened to their first album yet I don’t know for sure but I’d imagine this is close to what it sounded like. And I’ll be honest I prefer this mix of fuzz bass and synths to most of the rest of this album. I think I just prefer to have some elements of the song stick out rather than the whole thing wash over me. The instrumentation on this track is excellent and overall has damn near perfect construction.

    While the rest of the album doesn’t stick out to me like these two tracks, it’s not because they’re bad but because they work best within the context of the whole album. Lonerism works best as an album, much like ones from the 60s and 70s. Despite being a pretty loud album the constant waves of synth and guitar layers makes it a soothing experience, much like shoegaze. For the same reason that I don’t listen to Pink Floyd very often I probably wouldn’t listen to this too often either, because it’s going to make me feel tired.

    Overall this is an excellently put together album with a few track that really stand out on their own. If you’re sleep deprived like me though, listen when you don’t have anything to lose by drifting off because the dream element of dream pop is heavily emphasized here.

Album on Google Play
Album on ITunes
Album on Amazon