Tame Impala's Kevin Parker Wants to Make Electronica, If Only He Were Patient

When I asked Kevin Parker if he hails from another planet, he paused. Then he laughed.

"Not that I know of, no," the 20-something Aussie admitted. "I'm assuming that's a compliment of some description?"

The neo-psyche wunderkind, who records and performs under the guise of Tame​ Impala, just dropped his sophomore long-player, Lonerism, via Mo​dular. Lonerism is being heralded as a rich, ​"altern​ate take on anticipating technological encroachment," the stuff of forward-leaning revivalism and late-entry album-of-the-year contention.

Tame Impala has always been a rock band. Deeply indebted to the snarling, yet rosy vibes of late 60s and early 70s era psychedelia and prog, Parker's baby could—and still can—be viewed as the lovechild of Cream, Pisces, and maybe even Emerson, Lake & Palmer. Parker's music does not require drugs. Parker's music is drugs. But I wanted to know what led the project out of the far-out ambling of its first proper full-length, Innerspeaker (2010), to its new direction, a sugar-coated pop "jok​e," in Parker's words, that eventually came around to form a fully-realized capstone to some of Tame Impala's longest-running motifs.

When I caught up with Parker, currently at home in Perth, Australia, with the rest of his band (Tame Impala performs live as a five piece) for a few last days of rehearsals before setting out on a sprawling European jaunt in support of Lonerism, he sounded off on solitude, how to appropriately go about naming individual pieces of gear, and of course patience, or the lack thereof.

Hello, Kevin.
Hey.

What's up?
Not much.

How are you doing?
​Yeah, really good.

Congratulations on the new record. Exciting, yeah?
Oh, thanks. Yeah, I guess so.

I'm really intrigued with Lonerism as a word, a concept. Are you a loner? Am I a loner? Are we all loners, now, in this day and age?
I don't even know anymore, actually.

The word itself has this onomatopoetic ring to it, no?
Right, right. That's good. I like it because it just describes the idea of a loner as a kind of thing, a way of life, or whatever. What do you call that when you add "-ism" on the end of a word? What is that process? "Wordism"?

Something like that, yeah.
​I need to research that, actually. [laughs] But I just like it, because it makes me think of being a loner as a sort of destiny.

Is broadening your sonic arsenal Tame Impala's destiny? You've said – and it's certainly apparent on first listen – that you really expanded your palette with Lonerism, just in terms of gear. You went synthesizer crazy this time around.
Oh yeah, totally.

What were you looking for? Vintage gear? New stuff, fresh off the shelf? What caught your eyes and ears?
It was just whatever could get me that total, laser beam wall-of-sound. But growling at the same time. Totally gnarly, and ferocious. A ferocious laser beam.

"Elephant" is the first single off Lonerism.

I like that.
That's what springs to mind.

Do you have a favorite newly-acquired piece of ferociously laser-beam-y gear?Well, I haven't bought anything in a while, just because I've been away for so long. But the last synth I bought was a [Roland] Jun​o-106, which is quite common. It's from the '80s, I guess. But it just has such a warm ocean sound to it. I mean, put that into something that's going to distort it and completely fuck it up. It just has this other-wordly sound, you know? It sounds like spaceships landing.

Do you give names to your gear? You know, in the classic stoner sense. Like, 'check out my new bong, Crimson Tide'.
I mean, the idea of attaching a word, just a group of letters, that system of referencing doesn't really seem required. But we do always find ourselves calling things 'Bessie.' Like, everything we have, we call 'Bessie.'

There's that new Bessie Juno-106 at the 1:06 mark

You've talked a bit about taking an instrumental approach, limiting yourself to guitars, drums, bass, and any other more traditional gear, to making music in such a way that the songs begin to emulate the organic lurch of electronic music. Having added a range of synths and Bessie's to Tame Impala's sound, how has that approach changed, if at all?
Well it was really weird with the first album. I was into this idea of simulating artificial sounds, simulating synthetic and artificially repetitive music with completely organic instruments. Trying to simulate a drum sample that had been artificially looped, but just playing it the whole way through. I really liked this idea of imitating electronic sounds, and imitating electronic music. Having that organic feel, but having the repetition that electronic music has the luxury of.​

I'd almost go so far to say that some of your work, just given the repetition and layering, flirts with the realm of drone. Would you ever make a record purely based on droning slabs of electronica?
​I would love to. But unfortunately I don't think I have the discipline.

How so?
It really takes discipline to do something like that. You have to have patience. You need to be content with really simple things. It's amazing to listen to, and amazing to be a part of a group of people having a drawn-out drone jam. But for me, I'm just so obsessed with, say, a completely orgasmic chord change. With melody. Some sort of moment. I'm obsessed with these moments in music, rather than the long appreciation of it. With experimental music it can take a long time to really get into the zone. Whereas, especially with the last album, I was feeling quite obsessed with instant, crazy chord changes and crazy moments happening, rather than long periods of real blissed out droning.

But yeah, as you say, I'd love to do it one day. I'd love to have the patience.

Innerspeaker 's "Lucidity"

So you recorded some of the new album's vocals in Paris? What was that like?
It was very similar to recording them anywhere else, really, because I've just got my recording equipment and my headphones, and I'm holding the microphone.

No vocal booth?
​No. Not at all. Just whatever room I'm in. I just have to have no one else around, and a reasonable amount of confidence that no one can hear that I'm doing it.

How did the buzz of Paris compare to the still and calm of southern Australia, where you recorded Innerspeaker? What seeped into your vocal takes this time around, that maybe didn't before?
The vocal takes themselves, probably very little. I mean, I did a lot of the vocals in Perth. In fact I'd say it probably wound up being about half and half. It was kind of just wherever I was at the time that I wanted to finish the vocals. But by the time you get that into it, where you're recording vocals and writing lyrics – when you get into it, your surroundings just sort of fade into nothing.

Into space.
Right.

Godspeed on everything you've got coming up, man.
Thanks, dude.