Lonerism

Taming wild impala

What should be the style of a group named after such an exotic animal as a tamed impala? That's right, it would be something counter-cultural, independent, and experimental, with lots of intricate, fabulous arrangements and melodies, and, of course, the group will continue to look for their unique sound, use lots of tube amps and do the mind-blowers. Truthful, but rather narrow point of view for psychedelic rock-music, considering the monsters of psychedelia who changed, as loud as it sounds, the music. And here we have late The Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Doors, our buddy Jimi Hendrix, and more than a hundred or so bands and artists. This way to follow was chosen by the Australian indie rock band Tame Impala, who had recently appeared in the music world and has managed to gain the fame in the field of psychedelic and indie rock. Group began in 2007 and currently has two full-length albums called Innerspeaker and Lonerism, realizing the first one they made a good progress firstly at home and then in other countries, and after that went for a world tour. The second was released October 5, 2012, two years later. Judging by the album title, Lonerism is a kind of philosophy of being alone, that was mixed on band’s brand enchanting-psychedelic indie sound. Let's go for it.

Lonerism psychedelia

Be Above It opens Lonerism. The basis of the song is explosive, uneven rhythm with lo-fi noise and whispering shaman voice. This song immediately makes it clear what we are actually dealing with; it is a psychedelic style by Tame Impala. Endos Toi replaces the first track and in comparison with it is more melodic and complete. By the middle of the song the listener is set up for a number of musical tests – we hear distortion, various interruptions of melody and rhythm, and diverse experiments with the sound. Guys are chilling all-out. In this spirit of changes and experiments Apocalypse Dreams appears before us. This song was the first presented to the public and served as an example, which tried to incorporate all the changes occurred in the group. Synth rhythms and piano dominate there, track turned out to be bright and expressive. As for the semantic content and in order to follow album philosophy, the song presents the theme of loneliness, isolation and withdrawal. The middle of the album includes such songs as Why Won't They Talk to Me? and Feels Like We Only Go Backwards that continues the mood of the album based on rebellious spirit, society rejection, all wrapped in the original cover of noise and psychedelic sound. Well, in order to soothe the listener's soul, the album is ended by serene track named Sun's Coming Up, sung in the style of piano ballad.

24 hours from life of a teenager

Album Lonerism is a prequel to the previous album Innerspeaker and is a single story of a teenager lost in this world and who do not understand what step he needs to do next. Not digging too deeply and thoroughly examining the lyrics, one can only read the headers and they will give him the first impression about whom and about what this record is. They are Music to Walk Home By, Why Won't They talk To Me? and Nothing That Has Happened So Far Has Been Anything We Could Control. All of these titles paint a guy who tries at his best to be sociable, cheerful, but is caught in his depressive, melancholic thoughts, from which he cannot escape. Nobody understands him and during the party with friends, he would stand aside, in spite of all the fun, thinking only one thing – how soon he can go home and be alone with his own demon. This is probably the keynote that like a building line goes through all the songs on Lonerism and all the works of Tame Impala in total. As for the musical part of the album, it is in full accordance with Innerspeaker. The key objective pursued by the album can be formulated as to squeeze the most of the existing styles, and blend them with the experimental sound to find something new, something different. And all these tests and experiments with music are presented to the audience on the new album Lonerism by Tame Impala.