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She Just Won’t Believe Me

Here is a 57 second interlude that, unlike others of its kind, is not a calm and seamless transition into the next track. Instead it is a fuzzy mix of soaring synths, ringing guitars and nauseating flanger. The effect is apt for such a desperate refrain of the title (“She just won’t believe me”/ “I’d never been deceiving”), providing yet another conceptual track in what has thus far been a stunning conceptual album.

Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could Control

Carrying on from its mouthful of a title, this track is, like Music To Walk Home By, a heavily layered and beautifully textured lament. The drums follow a filled-out loop, with synth chords crashing with the cymbals providing a backdrop (rather than being at the foreground, like most of the album) for Kevin Parker’s still-awash-with-reverb vocals. In many ways this is the epitome of the album – synth and guitar effects galore with repeated motifs, loose and meaningful drumming and rounded off with a crescendo-building and disorientating solo. Or, alternatively, a stoner-rocker’s dream.

Sun’s Coming Up

This is perhaps the greatest oddball of Tame Impala’s discography. Though it is evident that most of Parker’s songs originate from his own experience, or else constructed from his imagination, Sun’s Coming Up, with its starkly minimalistic instrumental (Parker, with his voice uncharacteristically low over the top of a piano), stands out as wholly personal and intimate. This becomes evermore poignant when listening to the lyrics of the song where we find out that Parker is commentating on the death of his father, whom, though telling him from a young age not to venture down the path of music, was a main source of inspiration for him. The image of Parker’s father “playing his guitar whilst he’s dying of cancer” is a tough one to handle, with Parker somewhat, although not reliably, appearing nonchalant “I guess it’s over”. With such an end of gravitas, we are then left in a psychedelic void; strung out guitar chords ringing out over what sounds like a lo-fi recording of a child playing on the beach – an extremely poignant, albeit discordant, ending to a fabulous album.

Final Verdict

Some of the best albums of this century come in the form of conceptual ones; they seek to illustrate the power of music as an art form and not just a means of instant gratification. They remind us that an album is a holistic thing, not a compilation of hit singles. Though not being devoid of any catchy hit singles in the slightest, Lonerism is one such album that provides us with such holistic enjoyment. It is at once a psychedelic journey down the angst and bliss of a loner.

Image Credits: tameimpala.com