John Lucas

Just revisiting another of the stories I wrote for Concrete Skateboarding. Click here to read my article about Australian psych-rock wizard Kevin Parker and his musical project Tame Impala.

Impressively, Lonerism certainly sounds like the product of a group of people. It’s all Parker, though, and while the Fab Four vocal harmonies and acid-washed guitar licks of songs like “Mind Mischief” and “Apocalypse Dreams” suggest he hasn’t lost his taste for paisley-skies psychedelia, there are plenty of elements that set this LP apart from its predecessor. Foremost among these is Parker’s ample use of keyboards, adding layers of pastel-wash synth tones to tracks like “Why Won’t They Talk to Me?” and “She Just Won’t Believe Me”.

“I was just feeling like looking to other things to get new crazy sounds,” he explains. “I’m always trying to find the craziest sound, you know—the thing that sounds the least like it comes from Earth. It’s really difficult to do that with guitars, because whatever you do with a guitar, it’s usually going to end up sounding like a guitar. It’s going to have that kind of earthy, rock ’n’ roll feel. But with synthesizers, they just start in a completely different place. It was just really kind of exciting to have this whole new playing field of sounds and emotions.”