Album Review of The
Slow Rush - Tame Impala

BY NEAL MARTIN | MARCH 11, 2020<img alt="" src="https://s3.amazonaws.com/images.vinous.com/uploads%2F1583936985259-image+%28138%29.png"> Since resuming my passion for vinyl,
acquiring limited new releases has become a challenge. The chase is far more
rewarding than just clicking a mouse. Tame Impala’s aka Kevin Parker’s
highly-anticipated fourth album, the aptly-titled “The Slow Rush”, finally hit
the shelves on Valentine’s Day after Parker had spent what felt like an
eternity teasing its release. The studio boffin, perhaps the closest we have to
a modern-day Brian Eno, kept changing his mind and twiddling a few buttons in a
quest for perfection. On 14 February I was en route to Endo at the Rotunda,
a hot new Japanese sushi-ya that you will soon read about on Vinous Table, when
a friend texted me. His message read: Tame Impala - WOW! To be honest, I
was not planning on buying the album on its day of release because the tracks that
had seeped onto streaming platforms did not make the same impact on me as “Currents”,
the career-changing album that thrust Parker into an almost unique position as “avant-garde
festival headliner”. Then I discovered that HMV had released a special edition:
gatefold coloured vinyl with an exclusive one-sided seven-inch. Just 1,000
copies! I know that seems minor to any rational person but that is catnip to a
vinyl junkie.

I had to have one. 

I could not finish the day without this
inevitable collectors’ item in my clammy hands. 

After devouring a dozen courses of sushi, I
searched my nearest HMV in central London. Alas they were all culled when the retailer
flirted with bankruptcy. Wiping a tear from my eye as I reminisced about all those
hours idling around their flagship branch in Oxford Street, since reincarnated
as a turgid sports megastore, I bombed down to Guildford praying they still had
a copy...

As it turns out, “The Slow Rush” is far
better than augured by tracks that Parker drip-fed onto streaming platforms,
presumably road testing his audience. One of those tracks “Patience”, a lukewarm
song by Parker’s standards, notably does not make the final cut, testament to the
artist’s perfectionism. The album does not, or probably could not, achieve the quantum
leap of Tame Impala’s debut “Innerspeaker” to 2012’s lauded “Lonerism”, then
the astounding evolution that made 2015’s “Currents” both a critical and
commercial smash. But it does signal Parker as a singular artist at the top of
his game and my word, I can guarantee that you will not listen to a better
sounding album all year.

Opener “One More Year” shimmers with his
trademark panoramic sound and a hypnotic beat that overflows with energy. The
fantastic “Borderline”, sadly not a cover of the Madonna classic, exploits
Parker’s dreamlike falsetto over a bouncing beat that ricochets around your
head against cascading gorgeous minor chords, the closest this album sounds to
that paradoxical happy/sad banger that has become Parker’s currency. The b.p.m.
slows with the echo-laden, melancholy “Posthumous Forgiveness” that is draped
in gothic beauty thanks to its subtle church organ backing and funereal pace,
although like three or four songs, it drags unnecessarily at the finish. A bit
of editing would have made this better. Indeed, the album just sags a little
midway, which is why it falls a few steps short of Currents that was all
killer/no filler. Quality control is restored towards the end with the “Lost In
Yesterday”, underpinned by an irresistible ascending bass-line and Eighties
analogue synths. “Is It True” is bolted to a Daft Punk like bass-line that will
have your floorboards rumbling whilst “It Might Be Time” ingeniously utilises a
warped Steely Dan piano refrain with Seventies siren effects ripped from “Kill
Bill” and closing track “One More Hour” provides prog-rock grandeur updated for
2020.

“The Slow Rush” took five years to see the
light of day, though Parker apparently recorded the tracks in a period of
frenzied activity in recent months. The soundscape is so enormous that you
almost have to listen to this hour-long opus in separate sittings. Though less
immediate than its predecessor, it does repay repeated listening, revealing the
myriad of multi-layered sounds fastidiously stitched together. It begs the
question, where does Kevin Parker go from here? It feels as if he has completed
some kind of musical journey over the last decade and now, he needs to reset
and chart a new course. There is no question that he has the talent to do so.

Did I get my hands on that coveted limited
edition release? Arriving just before closing time with pessimism in hand, joy
of joys, I grabbed the shop’s last copy – and a beautiful object it is, too. Yes,
I could have just streamed the album. But some music is worth fretting over,
worth hunting down, worth owning physically so that are invested in it. I don’t
listen to “The Slow Rush”. I own it. Plus, that limited one-sided bonus 7-inch
that made it an instant collectors’ item. Is that extra song, incidentally
“Patience”, the one Parker demoted from the album, worth it? No, it’s still a
bit rubbish, but that’s not the point.

Wine Recommendation

Since Parker hails from Perth, something
from Margaret River is apt. You cannot go wrong with those old Cabernets from
Moss Wood. Pick any one you like, I don’t mind.

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