After a five year quasi-hiatus, the psychedelic etherealist outfit Tame Impala has returned with a new album, “The Slow Rush.” Tame Impala is actually just one man: Kevin Parker, an Australian singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who makes music in isolation, and who has had a sui generis kind of success in the last decade reviving a strain of rock not much heralded since the 1960s and 1970s.
Parker has also gone chameleonic in the years since his last album — he has collaborated with Travis Scott, Kanye West, Mark Ronson, Lady Gaga and others; also, Rihanna covered one of his songs. And he’s announced his desire to work more aggressively toward making tight pop music, the seeming antithesis of the floaty aesthetic he revels in on Tame Impala albums.
On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about how Parker has built and sustained Tame Impala, and the directions he might explore next.
On the Popcast:
Jon Pareles, The New York Times’s chief pop music critic
Jillian Mapes, Pitchfork senior editor
Source: Music - nytimes.com
