For all of their accessibility and popular success, Tame Impala are really quite an odd band. For a start, they only exist (as a band) in live settings. At all other times, they're really just Kevin Parker, beavering away in his bedsit studio like the love child of Alan Turing and Willy Wonka.
I don't know exactly how he records, but it's rather nice to picture him with his feet in a box of sand, as Brian Wilson was said to do when striving to compose his teenage symphony to God (known as the mythical Beach Boys album, 'Smile', for most of its life). And I'm not sure how theistic Mr. Parker is, either, but there is something rather Wilsonesque about him. A private genius, toiling away to ultimately make music that sounds, when completed, as light and free as the wingbeats of angels.
The key difference between Wilson and Parker - other than that Parker still seems to have all of his marbles - is their versions (or visions) of Heaven. Wilson's was undoubtedly a surreal hybrid of Baroque Cathedral and 50's Diner. Parker's, however, seems to a place where Prince, Mick Hucknall, Freddie Mercury and Diana Ross gather to play some kind of endless, blissfully aural game of chess, on a beach. With dancing.
Despite making two albums of largely psychedelic rock (picture George Harrison with added testosterone, making 'It's All Too Much' two dozen times), Parker's love of melody (like Harrison's) has always shined through. And Harrison comparisons are far more astute than those one could make any other Beatle. Despite being, like the two Daddy Fabs, a top-tier tunesmith, Parker tends to choose the aurally less travelled path. And his songs, like those of Harrison, and in particular, Marvin Gaye, are pitched in that timeless space between ecstasy and agony; or, put another way, in the heart of pure soul music.
The last Tame Impala album, 'Currents', was as remarkable a musical volte face as Dylan going electric; though, just like Bob's turn, you could see it was coming if you'd looked into the details carefully enough. The layered vocals slipping and sliding over each other like graphite sheets. Fuzzed guitars flashing like a magician's sleight-of-hand; the rough-looking surfaces in reality, as soft as the pollen-laden stamens of hibiscus flowers. 'Currents' took these tendencies to the next level; with guitars taking a back seat to lush, processed vocals, artful electronics and songs of pure pop. And by pop, I mean the real deal; the stuff that runs back to the 1940's; the songs that Dylan covered in his masterful run of 'uncovering' albums of the last decade. Songs that knew then (and know now ) that pain and pleasure are the two sides of the same coin. 'Currents' was a superb release, and convinced many that Kevin Parker was the real deal.
So, after three superb albums, the bar of anticipation is set high. The question for Tame Impala fans and music critics the world over: has he cleared it?
Well, my answer, for whatever it's worth, is 'has he ever!' It's February, and yet I'm deeply sceptical that a better album will be released in 2020. This is dizzyingly, brain-bendingly good music.
Let's start with the first song, 'One More Year'.
It starts with a Wilsonesque choral refrain being fed into an echoing fax machine, and put on repeat. Then, over the top of it comes the drum machines one might expect to find on a mid-80s Madonna song, as well as a second melodic line, this time, a mournful organ refrain. Then a bassline, and, before you've had a chance to digest that bassline, the vocals come in, offering yet another different melodic line, with super-subtle, jazz-toned rhythm guitar added for good measure.
And we are ONE MINUTE INTO THE FIRST SONG.
Crikey.
The song's verses are basically a turning wheel, a steady rotation. A blissful, dream-pop version of Kraftwerk's opus, Autobahn. The shifts in instrumentation are as seamless as they are abundant. Bongo percussion, piano, electric piano. A walking bassline suddenly augmented with electro-percussion, laden with stuttering echo. And taken together, it's like floating up Jacob's Ladder - the Biblical or the Perthical - take your pick. By the end of it, though, you realise there's a dancefloor pulse and lyrics that would perfectly suit a conga line.
Such is the wonderful world of Kevin Parker.
Making music this complex sound this effortless is the work genius. But doing it twelve times in one album; that really does prove you ARE one. Many artists have written a couple of perfect songs. Very few have written loads of them. Or sculpted them. Yes, perhaps that is a better way to describe these pieces. They aren't written as such, nor are they 'played'. Parker builds them from the ground up. He's responsible for every note. There's only one link in play here between nothing and something, and that's Parker himself.
I won't dissect every track in as much detail as I've done above, but rest assured, the album is laden with glorious details. Parker uses melodic lines like looped refrains, then adds other melodies over them. And his voice is becoming more and more capable of realising his vision of a dream-soul utopia. Also, you simply can't tell half the time, unless paying extremely close attention, whether you're hearing an organic bit of instrumentation or its synthesised sibling. This 'milk' music; the aural equivalent of a colloidal suspension.
So often throughout the album, elements sit together in such perfect harmony that it's only later that you realise just how incongruous Asian flute, synth-keyboard bass, electronic drums, timpani drums, plucked strings, electro-piano and call-response-vocals really are. These elements don't normally cohere like this. Most artists just don't have the ear - or the production abilities - to make so many disparate elements work together. The more attention you pay to this stuff, the more you hear. The Beach Boys and Beatles comparisons aren't idle ones, and it's not just because of the quality. Parker isn't trying to sound like these guys. He just does. Why? Because great music shares the common ground of simply being great. And that's what this is. Genuinely great music.
It's also distinctly Western Australian music. For all the influences, this sounds like US. Only a Western Australian can know this. The sound and feel of our beaches. The lifting shift of the southerly in summer. The feet on hot bitumen, moving quick from car to sand to water. The hugeness of our skies, looming beyond the hazing of city lights. The lugubrious drollery of being far away from everything, and yet drawn closer than most by the ensouling spirit of distance. Parker's made a Perth album. And it's f*cking terrific that he's done so. But that distinctiveness may come at a price: perhaps it's only we sandgroper-folk who'll be able to truly see this album for all of what it is.
To be honest, it’s all too easy NOT to hear just how good this music is, because it's incredibly easy to hear this music, and just enjoy it. It's light, bouncy, beautiful. That's the thing about great craftsmanship, I think; the skills of the artist make the creation as natural as life itself. That's what I hear when I listen to this. It captures ALL of my aural attention. I've listened to a lot of music over the years, listened to lots of very different music, and listened very carefully as well. So, getting the full gamut of my attention and appreciation is hard to do. Very hard. But this album does it, and it does primarily with a sound-palate that draws on 80s pop, which is a style, as a rule, that I don't even particularly like. I don't like this album because it sounds like Simply-Red-Prince-Donna, but in spite of it.
For all this fulsome praise, however, it's still not a perfect album. (For the millions made, only a handful are.) It does flag in a few places. At times, a little more overt (rather than subtle) melodic variety wouldn't go astray, nor would a few more key changes. But these are pretty minor quibbles, all told. Still, if Parker has a weakness, it's his lyrics. However, he's getting better and better, and in the song, 'On Track', he reaches a career highpoint. 'On Track' is a great song, but the refrain, 'but strictly speaking, I'm still on track' is a lyrical quip of genuine class. (Only takes two words to lift a line from the prosaic to the sublime.) This sounds like a song Freddie Mercury could have written. (And anyone who knows me knows that when it comes to songcraft comparisons, I don't say this lightly.)
In the end, it’s simple. Parker has made the album of his life. Very, very few artists make four brilliant albums in a row, and those who do so in a run that starts with their debut are an even rarer bunch. The Beatles didn't manage it. Neither did Dylan. The Beach Boys fell well short. Queen did it, though. Interesting, that. Because when it comes to artists with kitchen-sink ambitions from day one, Queen are probably the benchmark. Tame Impala do not sound like Queen. At all, really. But they share an uncompromising vision to sound like no one else, to steal from aural history like artful dodgers, and above all, to make music that, whilst acknowledging every possible form of emotional pain and suffering, is ultimately life and love affirming.
I'm pretty sure I won't hear a better album this year. If Parker makes an album this good again, he'll join that extremely select group of artist known as the greats. And if he supersedes it, well, should those greats gather for a meal, who knows where he'll be sitting.
Mark my words; this album is a major work of art. If I were you, I'd buy it on vinyl. You may even want to get a record player someday...