Tame Impala: Lonerism

Here is what Lennon and McCartney might have sounded like had they taken a boat ride down the scary psychedelic tunnel from Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. Chest-deep in the more frazzled moments from Magical Mystery Tour and Sgt Pepper, whilst also in fairly naked hock to Flaming Lips circa Yoshimi Versus The Pink Robots, the truly extraordinary thing about the second album from Perth’s Tame Impala is that it sounds as original as it does.
Maybe that’s because frontman Kevin Parker laces the marzipan with songwriting cyanide. In interviews he has explained the record’s title as an allusion to a well-documented social awkwardness and, as with Sufjan Stevens’ Age Of Adz, he uses orchestral psychedelia to express the sort of psychic hurt conventional songs are unable to articulate. Behind the gentle wooziness of ‘Sun’s Coming Up’, for instance, you can sense a bubbling-under hysteria. The blinding jauntiness of ‘Mind Mischief’ and ‘Be Above It’ meanwhile are almost too ebullient, the perkiness tipping into a sort of manic glee. The brighter Lonerism glows the more sharply defined the shadows. Only ‘70s stomper ‘Elephant’ – which recasts the theme from helicopter series Airwolf as breathless glam – feels remotely at peace with itself.