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Tame Impala Begin The Slow Rush Tour w/ 20 Songs! See Live Debuts

• Live Debuts
• On Tour Now
• Last updated: 10 Mar 2020, 18:17:46
• Published: 10 Mar 2020, 17:42:14
• Written by: Hannah Cotter
• Photography by: Daniel Knighton
• Categories: Live Debuts On Tour Now Tagged: Tame Impala The Slow Rush Tour 2020 The Slow Rush Tame Impala at Pechanga Arena

Tame Impala kicked off their North American Tour last night in support of their new album, The Slow Rush.

Kevin Parker, the mastermind behind Tame Impala, is joined on the road by his longtime four-piece band: Jay Watson on guitar and synths, Dominic Simper on keys and guitar, Julien Barbagallo on drums and Cam Avery on bass and synths. Clairo and MGMT are providing support on select dates.

The tour's opening night at Pechanga Arena in San Diego saw the live debuts of SIX new songs: "One More Year," "Reality in Motion," "Posthumous Forgiveness," "Past Life," "Is It True" and "Glimmer," as well as a cover of Lady Gaga's "Perfect Illusion!"

Tame Impala also surprised fans by playing "Expectation" off 2010's Innerspeaker for the first time since 2012 . Other highlights included The Slow Rush favorite "Borderline," which made its debut last year on SNL, and Lonerism songs "Apocalypse Dreams," "Elephant" and "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards."

A good chunk of the group's 20-song set consisted of songs off 2015's Currents. They played "Nangs," "Past Life," "Reality in Motion," "New Person, Same Old Mistakes" and "Let It Happen" before closing out the show with a two-song encore of "The Less I Know The Better" and "Eventually."

Here's the full setlist:

Check out some fan videos from the show:

Embedded content is no longer available.

The band has partnered up with the nonprofit REVERB to reduce their carbon footprint on the road! Tonight, they will take the stage at The Forum in LA.

Head to Tame Impala's website to see a full list of upcoming dates, including an Australian tour with Khruangbin, and another North American trek with Perfume Genius!

Tame Impala 2020 North American tour dates:

03/10 – Los Angeles, CA @ The Forum #

03/13 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center #

03/19 – Mexico City, MX @ Foro Sol #$

# = with Clairo

$ = with MGMT

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• Elephant ( 410 )
• Apocalypse Dreams ( 404 )
• Feels Like We Only Go Backwards ( 397 )
• Mind Mischief ( 358 )
• Why Won't You Make Up Your Mind? ( 346 )

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How Tame Impala's 'The Slow Rush' captured the mood of the pandemic before it even started

The other night in Chicago , Kevin Parker got on stage with Tame Impala and set the tone for his first concert after 18 months of being kept at home by a global pandemic with "One More Year," a haunting meditation on making the most of the coming year.

It's one of several highlights of "The Slow Rush," an album of dreamy neo-psychedelic synth-pop, that managed to capture the mood of 2020 in a way that Parker couldn’t possibly have meant to when he wrote the album, which came out Feb. 14, 2020. 

"That's kind of one of the strange things about the album, is how much a lot the lyrics people started noticing were relevant to the pandemic without ever being able to be intended to be," Parker says.

"It's crazy. It's weird. I can't really explain it."

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The Tame Impala leader, who brings the Slow Rush Tour to Gila River Arena in Glendale on Saturday, Sept. 18, just happens to love writing songs about time and imagining where we'll be in the future.

"It's something that sort of makes me dream," he says.

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'The Slow Rush' still means what it always meant to Kevin Parker

He had no way of knowing how closely his thoughts on the subject would mirror the mood of an entire year. 

"That was kind of just something that was in the general consciousness of everyone around that time," he says,

"Like '(Expletive), what's gonna happen, you know?' As a population or as a society or whatever, we've never had to sort of imagine or wonder what's gonna happen a year from now."

It hasn't changed the way he hears those songs. He knows what he intended.

"The songs that sort of weirdly connect with everything that's happening in the world, when I listen to them now, I kind of appreciate them for that," Parker says. 

"But they'll always mean what they meant when I wrote them, you know? Which is kind of more personal, I guess."

Being back on stage, finally sharing those songs with an audience felt great. 

"It had this other energy to it," Parker says. "I felt this connection with people more so than usual."

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'I didn't really bother to feel sorry for myself'

Tame Impala had just launched the Slow Rush Tour with shows in San Diego and Los Angeles when COVID-19 shut down the entire touring industry and sent them back home to Australia.

"My manager would tell you it was awful and completely disruptive," Parker says of the experience.

"But when the whole pandemic hit, it was so big, I just thought 'It's bigger than me.' I didn't really bother to feel sorry for myself about my album only being out a month."

It was immediately obvious, he says, that other people would be far more impacted.

"Complaining about my album release didn't seem like something I needed to be worrying about," he says.

"By the time the shows were canceled, that was small fry compared to everything that was happening in the world, you know?"

How Tame Impala adapted, DIY-style, to COVID-19

Upon returning to Australia, he immediately found new ways to be productive. 

"The idea of not working for me, it's kind of makes me anxious," he says, with a laugh.

"It makes me kind of feel a bit itchy."

First, he and his bandmates made the most of every opportunity they had to still promote the album without touring. 

"We started shooting our own videos of us playing live at my studio, editing them and then sending them off to  Jimmy Fallon or whoever," Parker says. 

"We had all our friends operate the cameras. It ended up coming out completely DIY, completely homemade, which I loved because I'm DIY to the core. That's one of the things I loved about the pandemic was it really celebrated being DIY."

Parker also used the time to work on new material, but he'd have done that anyway.

"I'm the kind of writer who doesn't call writing 'writing,'" he says.

"I make music. I don't sit down and go, 'All right, I'm gonna write a song.' But I'm always working on stuff, whether that's producing or writing or literally just making beats. For me, it's all kind of the same thing."

How Parker looks at 'InnerSpeaker'

Last year marked the 10th anniversary of Tame Impala's studio debut, "InnerSpeaker," a milestone Parker celebrated in March with a four-LP reissue of the album.

In preparing the reissue, Parker watched a lot of footage of the sessions for that album, a crazy experience, he says, because he'd never seen that footage. 

"It gave me this, like, snapshot of who I was back then," he says. 

"Which was hard to watch, because I was so cringe. Like, I cringe when I'm watching it. I was really naive. Really unsure of myself. I mean, I was really sure about what I loved and what I wanted to do. But I had something to prove more so than now."

There was this sense that you were watching someone making his first proper album.

"Up until then, I just sort of made songs for myself," he says.

"It was the first time I was making music that I knew was gonna get released by a record label. So there was this feeling that it was all up to this. Everything in my life had led up to this moment of making an album that was gonna get released."

Fortunately, he was young and stubborn at the time.

"That kind of protected me from having a nervous breakdown," he says. 

"Like, I was so determined to do what I wanted to do that no one else could tell me what the (expletive) to do. So that helped me through it, I guess."

If watching footage of himself recording "InnerSpeaker" makes him cringe a decade later, he's much happier with how it sounds.

"I think it's cool," Parker says. 

"It's inspired. It's not perfectly executed. Not perfectly mixed. It wasn't perfectly recorded. I went through hell and back making it. But I can finally tell why people were interested in it, why people were excited by it."

It took some time to get there, though. 

"Up until now, I've been like, 'Ugh, why would you go and see this band?,'" he says. "But now I kind of get it. There's a charm to it."

At the time of the album's release, he didn't understand why anyone would think of it as being any better than any other psych-rock band in any other city in the world.

"I was baffled as to why people thought it was better than all the other psych-rock bands' albums," he says.

"Because it had the same kind of guitar techniques and the same kind of musicality to it. But now I'm like, 'Oh, I can hear it. It sounds kind of charming or something. I don't know."

'I want to melt some faces'

It's not uncommon for Parker to need some distance from the making of an album to appreciate what he's created. 

"I've never gone like, 'Yes! I've just made the best album ever!'" he says.

"I've never felt that. But you know what? If I had, I'd probably stop making music, because it's that feeling of wanting to make the best album ever that makes you make another album. Because you foolishly think that you'll achieve it the next time."

Bringing that music to life on stage is a creative process with its own rewards and challenges.

"I put all my energy into the show, into making it the best thing it can possibly be, because in that moment, I want to blow some minds," he says.

"I want to melt some faces, which is basically the No. 1 goal of playing live, to melt some faces, whereas in making an album, you want to touch people. Which is great, because it means you get two different ways of doing what you love."

One aspect of the live experience that's grown on Parker is the traveling.

"It used to kind of terrify me," Parker says. 

"It used to freak me out, just being in a different place all the time. But after 10 years of doing it, it's kind of turned into something that I love, just looking out my hotel window and seeing a different view. It's something that's become really magical to me."

Tame Impala

When: 8 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 18. 

Where: Gila River Arena, 9400 W. Maryland Ave., Glendale.

Admission: $47.75 and up.

Details: 623-772-3800, ticketmaster.com.

Reach the reporter at [email protected] or 602-444-4495. Follow him on Twitter @EdMasley .

Support local journalism. Subscribe to azcentral.com today.

Tame Impala Take Us Even Higher on ‘The Slow Rush’

By Jon Dolan

Kevin Parker is a prog-rock wiz with a heart of pop gold, spooling out resplendent psychedelic symphonies in Tame Impala , a studio project that’s blossomed into a band big enough to headline Coachella . With his long hair and spacey jams, he can recall a bygone era of art-rock conjurer, those Seventies studio druids holed up in sound caves, subsisting on psilocybin tea and holding philosophical discourses with their beard fleas. But Parker’s a modern guy, and his music works because he balances pie-eyed grandeur with sugary sleekness; it’s part of the reason Rihanna covered one of his songs, and why he’s been tapped to work with Lady Gaga, Kanye West, and other stars.

The Slow Rush is Tame Impala’s first album since their 2015 breakout, Currents . Parker still sings like a Bee Gee with the soul of Bowie’s Major Tom, floating above his thick disco, funk, and trip-hop beats, beautifully manicured synth textures and easeful Yacht-soul melodies. Even when songs wander off into diffuse eddies, or when he crams several distinct micro-movements into the same tune, everything seems obsessively considered, as if he spends more time perfecting the hi-hat clicks than most artists take making their whole record. If someone told you an army of musicians had contributed to The Slow Rush, you wouldn’t be surprised, but the credits read simply, “All music written, performed, and mixed by Kevin Parker.”

He does his Brian Wilson thing in a dozen different directions. Album opener “One More Year” comes on expansive and polished, like a space cruiser that just rolled off the assembly line; glitchy Daft Punk-gone-doo-wop vocoder crooning fades into swirling disco drums, a subtle bass rumble, and splashes of Chic-y guitar as Parker sings about a perfect future just over the horizon. “Tomorrow’s Dust” is a hazy shade of hippie-folk splendor, all spindly acoustic filigree, forlorn fuzzbox jive, sensitive bongo taps, laser-beam synths, and gently sung lyrics that evoke pillowy alienation.

Parker isn’t afraid to wear his musical passions on his sleeve; “Glimmer” highlights his deep devotion to the Balearic blurt of classic Chicago house music and Detroit techno. On “On Track,” Parker’s a soft-rock poet, and the keyboards at the opening of “Might Be Time” send a clear signal that he’s the kind of cat who keeps one copy of Supertramp’s Breakfast in America for the house, and another for the beach house.

What does all this gilded majesty add up to? Probably not a ton. A whole album of Parker’s distracted, reverb-laden falsetto can get a little too drifty, no matter how dazzling the musical experience. Focus too deeply, and it feels less like a collection of songs and more like a showplace for his sonic finery. As mood music, though, it’s a sweet trip. “Let’s drink this magic potion of love and emotion,” he offers on the radiantly sunny “Instant Destiny.” So sit back, relax, and have a swig — it’ll take the edge off.

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Tame Impala’s ‘The Slow Rush’: Album Review

By Zack Ruskin

Zack Ruskin

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Beginning with the psychedelic vibes of Tame Impala ’s 2010 debut, “Innerspeaker,” the group — which, on record, is Kevin Parker alone — has gained acclaim for creating soundscapes that skirt the boundaries of pop, rock and dance music. The constant is Parker’s ethereal falsetto, which can sound like siren call from a distant world.

In the decade since “Innerspeaker,” Parker has gone from prog-rock prodigy to festival headliner. He’s also released two more albums, including 2015’s critically-lauded “Currents,” and collaborated with or remixed songs by everyone from Lady Gaga and Kanye West to Mark Ronson, Travis Scott and Zhu. Riding high on arena sell-outs and copious praise from music critics, the countdown to Parker’s fourth album seemingly started the moment “Currents” was released.

Five years later, it’s finally here, and the record’s title may be a wink to those who expected the album to drop when Tame Impala headlined both weekends of Coachella and served as the musical guest for “Saturday Night Live” — last spring. Parker recently acknowledged this was originally the plan, telling UPROXX that he had to “embody a bit of a Kanye West perspective” in choosing to hold off on releasing “The Slow Rush” before it was ready.

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Fortunately, it was worth the wait: “The Slow Rush” is arguably Parker’s most fully realized and satisfying effort to date. While lyrically, the album seems a bit escapist, Parker likes to operate somewhere in the middle, dabbling in the personal but often only as a piece of a larger meditation. The mournful guitar and hazy malaise that hangs over “Posthumous Forgiveness” sets the tone for Parker to attempt a reconciliation with his late father. Meanwhile, opener “One More Year” manages to translate an anxiety attack — “‘Cuz I get this feeling and maybe you get it too / We’re on a roller coaster stuck on its loop-de-loop” — into a unique 14/4 time signature that deftly masquerades as something more familiar to the ear.

When the climax of “One More Year” arrives in the form of an eruption of pulsating keyboards, listeners may wonder if Parker’s latest album will indeed include a worthy successor to the stomper “Elephant” (from Tame Impala’s sophomore effort, “Lonerism”), but such thoughts dissipate by the song’s coda, which turns ethereal, a universe removed from the chaos of a moment before.

The concept of time recurs throughout the album. The single “It Might Be Time” finds Parker cynically saying, “It might be time to face it / “You ain’t as young as you used to be,” while elsewhere, “One More Hour” — the album’s closing track — serves as a bookend to the opener, “One More Year.”

And whether or not those time references are a sly wink to the five years between “Currents” and this album, “The Slow Rush” proves that Parker has earned all the time he needs.

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The New Testament Of Tame Impala

Kevin Parker's fourth album is his best – and most painful – yet. He speaks to Esquire about forgiveness and perfectionism

Let's start with an indisputable fact: Kevin Parker is not Jesus. He is, admittedly, on earth to spread a kind of salvation. And he has that hair and those warm eyes and the little beard, which combine to make him look like he should be sat at the centre of Leonardo's Last Supper. But no, Kevin Parker is almost certainly not Jesus.

Granted, in the flesh, you might wonder. He has this energy, or perhaps, a lack of energy, that bequiets a room. It's a kind of stillness, a preternatural calm that seems to soothe the people around him. That might actually just be because he's a softly spoken Australian who's partial to a joint and who's written some of his best songs stoned out of his tree. For Parker, getting high is a way to escape the twanging of his brain, which can get in the way of his creativity. Hence, the mellow vibe.

But even at larger scales, you can sense his aura. He can lean out from the edge of a stage and make tens of thousands of people feel like he's singing just to them. Oh, and he does write songs like 'Posthumous Forgiveness', the centrepiece of his upcoming fourth album, The Slow Rush , in which he laments the failings of an absent father before offering him exoneration (although unlike the Biblical Son, Parker's comes backed with pillowy synths). And he does occasionally withdraw from the world for extended periods of painful self-examination, after which he drafts a group of acolytes to spread his message. But, look, he's not Jesus, OK?

Although if he was, it would explain all the Kevin Parker-as-Christ art his fans make, and why they self-identify as 'Disciples', and why they caption selfies taken with him as their "lord and saviour". It would also make sense of their fervour, which seems religious in its intensity, as though they're experiencing his music as something more than music, something transcendental. Hence why, though I'm fairly confident that he's not actually the Messiah, it's hard to be sure. Then again, nothing about Kevin Parker, or his alter ego Tame Impala, is exactly certain.

.css-f6drgc:before{margin:-0.99rem auto 0 -1.33rem;left:50%;width:2.1875rem;border:0.3125rem solid #FF3A30;height:2.1875rem;content:'';display:block;position:absolute;border-radius:100%;} .css-1aglugu{font-family:Lausanne,Lausanne-fallback,Lausanne-roboto,Lausanne-local,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:1.625rem;line-height:1.2;margin:0rem;}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-1aglugu{font-size:1.75rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-1aglugu{font-size:2.375rem;line-height:1.2;}}.css-1aglugu b,.css-1aglugu strong{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;}.css-1aglugu em,.css-1aglugu i{font-style:italic;font-family:inherit;}.css-1aglugu:before{content:'＂';display:block;padding:0.3125rem 0.875rem 0 0;font-size:3.5rem;line-height:0.8;font-style:italic;font-family:Lausanne,Lausanne-fallback,Lausanne-styleitalic-roboto,Lausanne-styleitalic-local,Arial,sans-serif;} "I'll do whatever it takes make music I think is inspired. Which is different to music that is good"

He is perhaps Australia's most famous rock star, but has spent most of his career hiding behind a band that doesn't really exist. He is a sought-after collaborator who literally cannot write music with anyone else in the room. He is a festival-headlining pop artist who makes dense psychedelic rock music. He is a perfectionist, verging on control freak, who thinks his best music is born in moments of unbidden inspiration. And he is a self-confessed anxious, self-critical loner who's rarely happier than when he's stood on stage in front of thousands of people.

This dichotomy is encapsulated in his songs, which can feel both intimate and enormous. Take 'Let It Happen', the breakout single from his breakout 2015 album, Currents . It's an eight-minute psych-rock wig-out, driven by a military drum beat that frequently judders apart like a scratched CD. As a record, it bangs. But Parker's falsetto and his shimmering synths are gossamer things that seem like they might blow away if you focus on them too hard. It's a song that makes the blood pump and stills the heart, all at the same time.

Which is precisely why Tame Impala is such an astonishing thing to experience in the flesh, ideally shoulder-to-beer-soaked-shoulder with thousands of fellow apostles. The communal uplift of 'The Less I Know The Better', or 'Lost In Yesterday', almost makes me understand why people go to those speaking-in-tongue megachurches. Parker has the ability to induce a kind of collective mania which makes you doubt the veracity of your memories. Did I really feel those things? Could I ever feel those things again?

When you see Tame Impala live – and I cannot stress this enough, when he hits the road later this year, you must see Tame Impala live – he will be flanked by other men, on drums and synths and guitars. For years, it was assumed that Tame Impala was a collective noun. A band, in the time-honoured meaning. And then, around the time that Currents was going platinum and being nominated for Grammys and winning ARIAs (the Australian equivalent), Parker slowly began to disabuse people of an assumption that he'd spent years cultivating. There was no band. There was him, alone.

Those songs, those rapturous, transportive songs, were his, the fruits of his mind and his fingers and nothing else. He wrote every chord, recorded every hi hat, mixed every vocal line. He had no producer, no engineer, no session musicians, sometimes not even friends to ask for feedback. It was lonely work at times, but it was his work. And then, when the time came to tour it, he'd teach his mates how to play the songs he'd written.

It turns out that this is how Parker has made every Tame Impala record, since 2008's first eponymous EP and up to his next album, The Slow Rush , which is due on 14 February. Being the best thing he's ever made, it's a lovely Valentine's Day gift to the world.

New music is here. A new tour is pending. He has a new approach to life, as well, which embraces success rather than fleeing it. Kevin Parker probably isn't Jesus. But he's definitely been reborn.

Your first gigs start soon. What's the process of turning music you've made on your own into something you can take on tour?

It's different every time. Converting something that I do by myself into something that five people stand on stage and perform in front of people is fun. It's one of the parts of everything that I do that is just unabashed fun. It's a little bit daunting because I never consider my music as something that needs to be performed live for it to fulfil its potential. For me, the music I imagine making is for people listening to by themselves.

I find that slightly surprising, because there's definitely a disco, dancefloor feel in The Slow Rush . 'Glimmer', especially, sounds like a house record.

I've always loved disco and I've always loved primitive house music. I've always just checked myself to not make Tame Impala that. But 'Glimmer' was just something I was messing around with in the studio one day. I didn't actually intend for that to be on the album.

Not at all. I kind of jam with myself all the time in the studio. It's usually the stuff that I do in between working on the music that I'm passionate about, like, just fucking around the studio is kind of what I do. Almost like a palate cleanser. 'Glimmer' was one of those because it was just me. I just set up a 707 drum machine and I just hit record because I was testing out this new tape machine that I had. I listened back to it and it just spoke to me for some reason. It makes me dream, you know?

Is it important to have that sense of chance when you're writing songs?

Yeah. I can't emphasise enough how important it is to me to feel like I'm just outside my safe zone. It's really important to me to feel like I'm on the verge of it all turning to shit.

"From the moment I think of a song, it's a series of let downs. That sounds depressing but it's not"

It's always the most exciting when there's risks being taken.

Hundred percent.

You've talked before about experimenting in the studio, things like putting chords on as you go to sleep and then waking up with a melody in your head. Is that part of that?

Yeah. I mean, it's funny cos that that one, the putting the chords on loop and going to sleep, I didn't think of that as an experiment. It was more just like, 'I'm just gonna do this because it seems like a good idea'. But the thing is I'll do whatever it takes to get to a spot where I feel like the music I'm making is inspired. Which is different to making music that I think is good. Like it came from a part of me that wasn't calculated, where I don't know where that came from. That's important to me.

What else gets you to that point?

When I'm kind of uncomfortable, that's when I think of melodies. They come to me when I mentally just want to kind of escape, or mentally fill a void. And I hate being stoned in public, right? I hate finding myself in that situation, it makes me uncomfortable. So when I was recording this album, I intentionally did that. Just to see what happened. Rather than not go outside, I went, OK, I'll go to the shops or try and do some grocery shopping.

Now, a pop psychologist might see these unbidden melodies as a form of mental self-protection. Parker's childhood was, let's say, non-linear. His parents – both emigrés , his father a Zimbabwean accountant, his mother a free spirit from South African – divorced when he was four. He bounced between them for a decade, at which point they briefly reunited only for things to fall apart again. A year or so before this rekindling, Parker's father had discovered he was smoking weed with his friends and banned him from ever seeing them again. He also informed their parents. At the precise moment a young man's social world is meant to expand, Parker had his ripped away. He developed an almost chronic shyness, for which music became a kind of balm. Could those unbidden melodies be his mind's way of filling up the space where voices suddenly weren't?

"There's probably something in that for sure," Parker says. Music had already saved him once, in the wake of his parents' divorce, first when he discovered drums at the music school they sent him too and then when he started dabbling with the guitars that littered his father's house. "It took over almost instantly from me playing with Lego. You could probably mark quite clearly where I started learning drums because I stopped playing with Lego. It was quite abrupt."

He knew early, too, that he wanted to do everything himself. It was like a problem to solve, a puzzle to piece together. He likens it to Lego, the idea of "creating something from nothing." But it also led to a strange relationship with creativity. When he joined bands later, using music as a way to make new friends, he struggled to draw the lines between fun and work. He still does.

"I've never been able to separate making music with other as a social time from it being a creative time," he says. "When I was 14, playing in a rock band in high school, I was more excited by the fact that I was hanging out with my friends than I was about being creative. Going on to bands I was playing in when I was 21, even then making music with my friends was still just a time that I relished as time I got to hang out with my closest friends. And then when I would be on my own, that's when I could finally start being creative."

In the last few years, the isolated solo artist has became an in-demand collaborator, who's crafted hits for Travis Scott and Lady Gaga and spent a bunch of studio time with Mark Ronson. But the awkwardness endures. He still can't really write with other people, can't split fun time from creating time.

Is it tough to collaborate when you've got that urge towards solitariness?

I always saw being solitary as a necessity, because I didn't know how to make [music] with people. I like to think that if I could make Tame Impala music with other people I would. So I always wanted to make music with other people. The idea of me writing pop songs that I didn't sing was extremely alluring to me. To be honest, this is another thing that I dragged myself kicking and screaming into doing. I mean, it's no more uncomfortable than just meeting new people. Some people hate doing that and I'm one of them. But I knew the rewards would be great.

Who would you love to work with?

You know what, I'm running out of people that I haven't worked with that I would like to, just because of how it's worked out.

That's a good problem to have.

Yeah. I'm not gonna say anyone because I don't want to jinx it, you know? But hey, fuck it, I'd love to work with Daft Punk. I think that could be really good.

What's your role when you're in a room with, say, Mark Ronson?

Mark is someone I've been super close with for a long time now, so it's much easier for me, but the big difference is because I've never been able to separate creative time from social time, I know that I piss Mark Ronson off sometimes. Because we get together and I can sometimes just be in a giggly mood because I'm hanging out with Mark.

How long does it take before you're comfortable enough to just snap into it?

I've never snapped into it. I never have. There's no one in the world that I've been around with where I've felt as creative as I do when I'm alone. All the songs that I've worked on with people have been things that I've started on my own and brought to them. I haven't written a single chord progression in the company of another person that made it in the actual song. When I'm alone, there are just different things that come to me. I just have a different, I guess, way of thinking.

'Posthumous Forgiveness', which is kind of the lynchpin of the new album, is about the relationship with your father, right? Can you unpack that a little bit for me?

It's a song for the sake of the song right, you know? My feelings in that song are not how I feel every day. But it kind of struck me how I discovered something about my dad after he was dead. Around the time that he died, I was still pretty young – he died around 10 years ago. Him being my father, I worshipped the ground he walked on, I never assumed that he could ever put a foot wrong because he was my dad.

It didn't occur to me that he actually made decisions that were because he was weak. Because he wasn't courageous or he was only looking out for himself in a particular situation. It just struck me that he was just a regular old person who does shit things sometimes. And then a short while after that I just decided to not get hung up about it. So the last bit of the song is meant to suggest this idea that when you forgive someone who's dead, you don't forgive them because they were suddenly able to explain themselves. You just forgive them because they're human and they fuck up, you know?

They're not asking for it, but you are able to give it.

Exactly. So 'Posthumous Forgiveness' is one-sided in that way. It's not like it was explained to you. I guess it was something that I got from growing up, too, realising that adults aren't necessarily any better than children.

"You have to shake the snow globe up"

Last December, Parker released 'Posthumous Forgiveness' as an album single proper, but before that there'd been a nearly seven-month gap when fans had heard nothing new. Which was odd, because a year earlier, things had looked rosy. In December 2018, Tame Impala was announced for the Saturday headline slot at Coachella, which had just been vacated by Justin Timberlake. This was notable for a number of reasons, one of which was the novelty of someone playing a guitar at a music festival in 2019, but also because, surely, it meant new music. It had been four years since the last album and no one announces a festival slot, and a world tour, without something new to promote. And, duly, two singles arrived: blissed-out funker 'Patience', and 'Borderline', which sounded like ELO covering Pharrell. Then, nothing. Silence. Fans got edgy. The tour was nice and all, but shouldn't Parker be in the studio?

He should have been, and he wanted to be. He wanted to have new songs to play, but they weren't ready. So he wasn't going to play them. In hindsight, he even regretted putting those singles out. "It was around the time I was so inside my own head and just completely lacking in perspective," he says. "And so those songs came out and then I just realised that I wanted them to sound different." On the album, 'Borderline' has taken a new form, one closer to the version that had first materialised in Parker's mind. "I thought it was totally slamming hip hop, boom-crack drums," he says. "Months later I listened back to it and I was like, ah, kind of sounds like Seventies rock."

Back to the studio it went, to be reworked, polished, remixed and remastered, until he got it close enough to the platonic version that existed in his brain. It's how he writes all his music: first, inspiration; then what can seem like an endless process of reshaping until the corporeal thing is close enough to the imaginary thing. "There's no song that sounds exactly like I imagined it, because when you imagine it, it doesn't really exist. It's completely abstract," he says. "In a way, from the moment I think of a song, it's just a series of letdowns."

Are those "letdowns" what led to the gap?

No, that would be my own brain. I really wanted to have [the album] finished for that touring season but it was wrong of me to choose timing over quality. And I guess it proved to myself that I care that much about my albums, because of how much I wanted to have an album finished by then. And I get really hard on myself. I was like, 'You're fucking worthless, you're pathetic', but I guess the fact that it is me doing it all, there are more ways that it can grind to a halt.

There's no one telling you to just release it?

Not just release [it], but let's go to the studio. 'Let's sit down and let's write those chords that you have to write to finish this song.' The hardest thing to do in that time would be to just sit down and finish the song because I just wanted to do something else, or something would take my attention, or I was bugging out about it. In those moments, I wish I was just a pop artist who had people buzzing around doing all these kinds of things around me. I just suggest something on a whim and it happens.

But you could have that. The only thing stopping you is you choosing not to have that.

Exactly. But I know in my heart that the music would suffer. I would love to just be lying on the couch the entire time my album is being made and have someone else carry out my wishes. And maybe the music wouldn't suffer and maybe it would just be better because I wouldn't be – I have all kinds of thoughts like that, with this album at least. I knew I had to do it that way. But this might be the last album that I do like that. I don't just mean on my own, but working that intensely.

What would that look like?

Like, if I just made an album in a week. If I made an album in one week, some of my fans would consider it my best album. I honestly believe that. And the more albums [I make], I realise how important that kind of shaking it up is. You have to shake the snow globe up.

Do you actually feel this way, or is this just the post-album emotional hangover?

Here's the devastating plot twist: I said everything I've just told you when I finished [last album] Currents . My manager reminded me just the other day, actually, when I was finishing up this album. I was like, 'I'm not doing an album by myself again'. And she said, 'You fucking said that last time'.

Was this one tougher than the previous ones?

The last sort of two or three weeks of making the album was just nonstop. I'd wake up at nine in the morning and go until midnight and then go to sleep. I didn't watch TV. I didn't go out to dinner. I don't think I left my house in LA in about two weeks.

What are you working on at the point?

Everything. I was writing lyrics up until the hour that I finished it. There was a song, 'Is It True', that was only half-finished at about midnight. It was a demo that I'd recorded in about six hours almost a year before. From about midnight to eight am was when I completed the rest of the song which was writing, recording and mixing. That song was about one minute long until midnight, 21 November. And then I finished the whole album the next morning.

"There's no one in the world that I've felt as creative with as I do when I'm alone"

That's seven months after your Coachella slot. How tough was it touring with only two new singles?

It was. That's not to say it wasn't fun and fulfilling. But that's why I desperately wanted to have the album out because I wanted to play new music.

The scaling up of your live shows has happened in conjunction with you taking ownership of Tame Impala more, accepting your rock star-ness, at least more than you used to. Has that changed anything for you?

It hasn't changed my songwriting, but I guess everything else it has.

In what way?

Just appreciating myself as an artist, which is something I didn't do. For anyone that's a fan of me, to hear that they would probably think that's ludicrous, you know? But it took me a long time. It's this, I guess, self-confidence thing that plagued me. Being afraid of people judging me, which everyone has, but I had it particularly hard. When I became a teenager I got the shyness thing pretty hard. It's taken a lot to drag me out of that. This sounds a very overblown way of saying it, but it took international success for me.

"There's so much more I want to do but it has to be good. Which is what makes it difficult"

Which is not to say that it should – it shouldn't take that to pull anyone out of that, you know, because I still feel worthless. And you know what else? I know that people a hundred times more successful than me feel worthless and feel socially inept. André 3000 feels socially inept, sometimes, or most of the time, I guess, which blows my mind. But I guess what's changed is appreciating myself as an artist and realising that me as a person, how I feel and how I see the world, is an important part of presenting my music. In the past, I would have thought that a video clip of my ugly face singing the song, it's just going to make the song worse. Now, I think, well, even if I do have an ugly face, at least it's me. And I should celebrate that where I can.

Have you done work besides, you know, massive international success?

No, I'd love to say there was an enlightening, 10-day silent meditation trip, but it really wasn't. It's just me telling myself that this is how my journey as a music creator will be better and make sense. And you know what? Not just better for me, this will make it better for everyone. I always assume that people will enjoy it more if I kind of just don't do anything else to go along with the music. But the biggest thing was as soon as I realised that I was doing people's enjoyment of the music a disservice by being kind of shy and just being severely understated. It's funny, because every night I walk on stage, you know, in the few minutes before I step on stage, I'm like, 'Oh my god, what am I doing?' There's a part of me that wants to run back to the dressing room and there's another part that's like, 'Come on, Kev', just dragging myself on stage. And then I walk offstage feeling like a pop star in the best possible way.

Do you feel trepidation when you share something you've worked on alone with other people?

Not if I'm feeling good about it. If I'm feeling good about it, I can't wait for people to hear it. But I know that as soon as I do play it to someone my expectations will lower a bit. When I'm working on something that I've written myself, and no one in the entire world has heard it, I feel like the first person who does is gonna burst into tears of joy and tear off their clothes and run into the ocean. Which is obviously never true. At least to my knowledge. So playing my music other people is kind of a process of bringing the song back down to earth.

Do you take feedback well?

Uh, yes? [pause] Yes. I mean, I don't tell them to fuck off. I'm not going to tell them to ram it. But like I said, me playing my music to other people is a time of the sun coming back down to earth. And in that way it's always a letdown but that's part of it. That sounds really depressing but it's not.

What songs are closest to how you first imagined them?

That's difficult. Well, 'Is It True', weirdly enough. And that might be because it was a song that I spent the least amount of time on, which actually now that I'm thinking about it, is actually quite profound. But none of them, really.

Has success brought more confidence or do you worry about how things are going to be received?

Oh, no, there's always that concern. I mean, that's kind of one of the whole things of it, being at peace with the idea of people hating it. And also trying to find some way to harness that and use it as an energy. I think Kanye West said a while ago that people hating you is the same as people loving you. Same emotion. Because it's just them caring about you.

The worst thing is no reaction at all.

Exactly. So I've been coaching myself to embrace the idea of people thinking something that I do is trash. It's important that they disagree with it.

What does success look like for you now?

I guess it's like artistic fulfilment. Which may be this pot of gold at the bottom of the rainbow that I'm chasing. And probably is. But it won't stop me trying. I feel like there's a kind of a magical, mystical way of me making music that will just be, you know, easy. Like making brush strokes on a canvas and feeling satisfied with them. I'm one of those people that's infinitely curious about things, as well. The idea that my albums only occupy a small area of the world of music kind of annoys me. There's so much more I want to do. But it has to be on my terms. It has to be good, which is what makes it difficult.

Styling: James Sleaford | Styling assistant: Rosalind Donoghue

Photographer: Danny Lowe

Art direction: Lisa Barlow

Grooming: Andrea Gomez Anzola using ClarinsMen

Hair stylist: Andy Smith

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Tame Impala – ‘The Slow Rush’ review: a 57-minute flex of every musical muscle in Kevin Parker’s body

Tame Impala’s first album in five years sees them move away from guitars and into mega-pop songwriting. The results are exhilarating

You have to feel a little bit for Tame Impala . It wasn’t Kevin Parker’s intention to be coronated the saviour of rock on a mainstream level, but – for better or worse – that’s what happened. As genres started collapsing into themselves in the last decade’s second half – rock into electronic, pop into hip-hop – there Parker stood in the middle of it all, guitar in hand. Following 2012’s mainstream breakthrough ‘Lonerism’, their third album ‘ Currents ’ established them as rare modern guitar heroes making the leap to festival headline slots.

It remains an unfair burden. Interviewers have recently found Parker keen to move the conversation away from the rock saviour narrative. Speaking to Billboard , he made it clear that his ambitions lay in the pop battlefield, explaining that “writing a catchy, sugary pop song” is “the yin to the yang of psychedelic rock”. Instead, he wants to “be a Max Martin”, a reference to one of the most celebrated songwriter this side of the millennium, whose credits include work with Justin Bieber , Taylor Swift and The Weekend .

Since ‘Currents’, Parker has become a voguish producer adored by hip-hop titans – from Kanye West to A$AP Rocky – and pop heavyweights such as Lady Gaga (he co-wrote some of her rootsy 2016 album ‘Joanne’ ). His horizons have broadened beyond a home-studio in Melbourne – he’s now in the thick of LA’s music scene.

It seems there were endless moving parts and inner-conflicts rattling Parker’s mind in the five-year gap between ‘Currents’ and Tame Impala’s fourth album, ‘The Slow Rush’. He’d hoped to have the album out to coincide with their headline appearance at Coachella last Spring. That didn’t materialise and he’s since admitted that work only really began towards the end of 2018. Well, fans’ expectations have been dizzyingly high: i t’s little wonder that this album has such a large gestation period.

So: was ‘The Slow Rush’ worth the wait?

The answer, for the most part, is – deep breath – a resounding ‘yes’. This is a 57-minute flex of every musical muscle in Parker’s body. Crunchy guitars are largely absent, but we’re left with something far more intriguing – a pop record bearing masterful electronic strokes. If ‘Currents’ soundtracked the glorious come-up, ‘The Slow Rush’ is the wobbly morning after, with everything and everyone under question.

This tone is established through the first few lines on moody opening track ‘One More Year’, Parker’s most intimate song to date. As a steady beat and glitchy loops establishes itself, he ponders about his connection to the places outside his studio, and outside his own head: “ Do you remember we were standing here a year ago / Our minds were racing and time went slow / If there was trouble in the world we didn’t know / If we ever cared we didn’t show”. The second half of previous single ‘Posthumous Forgiveness’, a reckoning with Parker’s now-deceased father, is a cathartic rumination on their tricky relationship and his now superstardom: “Wanna tell you ’bout the time / I was in Abbey Road / Or the time that I had / Mick Jagger on the phone” . 

Parker reflects on the power of nostalgia (‘Lost In Yesterday’) and the fear of losing his mojo (‘It Might Be Time’), while the spindly ‘Tomorrow’s Dust’ is a slap round the face in the favour of progress: “ There’s no use tryin’ to relate to that old song”. This is not the kind of powerhouse songwriting you’d expected from Max Martin, but ‘The Slow Rush’ is actually better for it. These songs are often ethereal, dense and cosmic: you won’t find a happy-go-lucky, catch-all chorus here.

And, to return to the notion of Kevin Parker w under-producer , this album simply sounds phenomenal. The production, sound design and creative instrumentation are genuinely outstanding throughout – nobody does it better than our Kev.

Take ‘Is It True’, which continues the kind of boogie he rolled out with Trinidadian rapper and singer Theophilus London for their 2019 cover of ‘Only You’, a serious ’80s groover originally performed by cult Nigerian hero Steve Monite. ‘Breathe Deeper’ flits between ravey pianos and ‘80s Fleetwood Mac – with a touch of Daft Punk’s ‘Da Funk’ thrown in the song’s final 90 seconds.

Sometimes, though, the songs don’t quite do the production justice. 2019 single ‘Borderline’ has been reworked and fleshed-out, a move that still can’t mask the lacklustre chorus. And where’s 2019 single ‘Patience’? It’s a genuine anthem and a much better song than ‘Borderline’. The album’s final quarter sags somewhat; from ‘It Might Be Time’ on you’d be forgiven for thinking time itself has stood still as you wait for this spectacular, exhausting album to finish.

As far as follow-ups to an earth-shattering run of albums go, though this is much more than just a solid return. It is, overall, an exhilarating listen. Tame Impala are unlikely to lose any fans by embracing Parker’s pop sensibilities – genres are history, man – but you have to admire their wilful desire to push into new directions. This band aren’t rock music’s saviours; they’re so much more than that.

Release date: February 14

Record label: Fiction

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The Slow Rush

By Jill Mapes

February 14, 2020

For Kevin Parker, perfectionism is a lonely thing. The fastidious Tame Impala mastermind often copes with his self-isolation and doubt through stonerisms, highly portable mantras like “ let it happen ” and “ yes I’m changing ” and “ gotta be above it ” (said three times fast to ward off bad vibes). Their inverse is the negativity Parker’s trying to keep at bay in his head: “ It feels like we only go backwards ,” “ But you’ll make the same old mistakes ,” “ You will never come close to how I feel .” It is easy to get lost in all the layers of groovy, time-traveling technicolor surround sound, particularly because Parker isn’t really trying to be clever or literary, but the internal tug of war within the Australian musician’s lyrics—between trying to better yourself and stay present, or succumbing to your own worst thoughts—is part of what keeps fans faithfully returning to Tame’s three albums, perhaps subconsciously. The repetition of phrases pairs well with the dubby, trance-like aspects of the music. Think of it as psychedelia for people with meditation apps and vape pens: Instead of opening your mind, you’re just trying to silence it.

On Tame Impala’s fourth album, Parker addresses the eternal enemy of perfectionists everywhere: time. He struggled with it himself, considering The Slow Rush arrives five years after Currents , the album that made his one-man band more famous than he could’ve imagined. Parker has toured arenas, headlined mega-festivals, worked with Travis Scott and Kanye West, more or less ditched the skinny scarves, and had the rare honor of being covered by Rihanna (and making her dance like this ). He intended to release The Slow Rush just before headlining Coachella last April, but he didn’t feel like it was ready yet. You could sense that flux in the album rollout: First single “ Patience ” hinted at a yacht-rock direction but ultimately didn’t make the cut; second single “Borderline” was trimmed and beefed up for the LP; and the whole thing was remastered following a November 2019 listening party, where he couldn’t stop noticing things he wanted to tweak. Given time, Parker will tinker.

Clearly, all the tinkering paid off. The Slow Rush is an extraordinarily detailed opus whose influences reach into specific corners of the past six decades, from Philly soul and early prog to acid house, adult-contemporary R&B, and Late Registration . I have to marvel that all this sound and history comes from Parker alone, picking every string and twisting every knob. He’s always used strong melodies and riffs to anchor his more unconventional structures, but there seems to have been a slight shift in perspective: Working with hip-hop producers got him thinking more about samples—how they unite music of different eras and genres under one roof.

But Parker, with his vast knowledge of tools and techniques, doesn’t need to sample—he creates the kind of music that other people like to sample . He can make his own instrumental loops that sound like Daryl Hall (the bittersweet keyboard in “On Track”), or Jimmy Page (the riff throughout the first part of “Posthumous Forgiveness”), or Quincy Jones (the “ Ironside ”-esque siren that lends panic in “It Might Be Time,” an ode to feeling washed). You might think you recognize the acoustic riff circling early-’70s soul-cruiser “Tomorrow’s Dust,” or the ascendant piano line in the ’90s-via-the-’70s R&B jam “Breathe Deeper,” but what you are most likely hearing is Parker’s gift for crafting classic parts.

This “sampled but not” sensibility, along with Parker’s constant use of boom-bap-style drums, is one of the ways that Tame Impala makes rock music that feels in conversation with hip-hop. And while Parker employs more acoustic instrumentation here than on Currents , The Slow Rush is also shot through with the effortless pulse of house music—the kind of grooves that dare you not to dance. On the kinetic opener “One More Year,” the record’s initial beat sneaks up from behind a robot chorus with a tremolo effect and doesn’t let up until everyone’s had a chance to strut and pose through the bass and conga breakdowns, and Parker’s made his little coach’s speech (“We got a whole year! 52 weeks! Seven days each...”).

This is a decidedly more upbeat Parker. There’s another person firmly in the frame with him now, an implied “we” as the newly wed Parker sees the next 50-ish years spread out in front of him—imagining kids, coming to terms with the choices he’s made, the whole bit. The Slow Rush seems to work from the present forward, maintaining the “fuck it, let’s do this” energy of “One More Year” with “Instant Destiny,” a swirling start-stop of a victory lap where he threatens to do something crazy, like buy a house in Miami. Almost immediately he regrets his impulses: “Gone a little far,” starts “Borderline,” with its mournful keyboards. Later, on a sentimental semi-ballad about keeping pace (“On Track”), he seems to wonder if that purchase is such a good idea: “Babe, can we afford this?” Parker toggles between positive and negative thoughts as usual, but at least he sounds like he’s genuinely having some fun.

The worst you can say for The Slow Rush is that when you offer multipart epics on multipart epics, you’re bound to have some sections that feel less crucial by comparison. “Posthumous Forgiveness” and “Tomorrow’s Dust” both go on a passage or two longer than they should. The falsetto-led melody that opens early-album victory lap, “Instant Destiny,” feels incessant and cloistered until the song opens up a bit, thanks in part to a luxe xylophone break. “Lost in Yesterday” tries to edge up an aggressively beachy vibe with Daft Punk vocals and dub effects, and ends up feeling a little dated; then again, I could see it killing at all those big festivals the band will headline over the next few years.

Parker may want to be a Max Martin type in another facet of his career, but in his own band, he’s still a sonic-maximalist introvert searching for inner peace. He seems to locate it in the quietest moments of the album’s show-stopping seven-minute closer, “One More Hour.” “As long as I can, as long as I can spend some time alone,” he sings atop steady piano chords, the barest he’s sounded all record (and still drowning in echo). Suddenly there are tense, fluttering strings and an apocalyptic, heavily phased guitar, then another gnarly riff, crashing drums, and Moog synths firing in all directions. The effect is something like multiple YouTube videos accidentally playing at once, a restless mind making gorgeous chaos—the work of a true perfectionist.

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‘The Slow Rush’ Sees Tame Impala Triumph Through Psychedelic Nostalgia

After almost five years, tame impala return with the slow rush , one of their finest releases to date, with kevin parker’s spacey psychedelia stealing the show., tyler jenke, tyler jenke's most recent stories.

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When it comes to a musician like Kevin Parker, it can be hard to work out whether you envy him or feel a twinge of pity. After all, in just over a decade, his Tame Impala project has seen him become one of the most lauded musicians in the rock genre, and with it, someone who constantly has more expected of him than any of us will ever know.

When Tame Impala’s  Currents was issued back in 2015, it was a musical revelation, with the album not only scoring rave reviews from just about every publication out there, but also winning ARIA Awards , being nominated for a Grammy, and being named as one of decade’s best.

In theory, it would almost be easier for an artist like Parker to never release another album to avoid any of the potential disappointment that comes by way of an underwhelming release, allowing him to live out his days as a producer who went out on the top of his game.

Of course, any fan of Tame Impala would tell you that words like “underwhelming” or “disappointment” are some not found within the vocabulary of Parker.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpbblMR_jUo

Having first hinted towards the release of a new record back in 2018, Parker had indicated that fans could be expecting the release of his long-awaited fourth record by the middle of 2019 . Ultimately, he at least gave us a taster of new material, with the likes of “Borderline” and the non-album track “Patience” ending the musical drought.

However, the delay in the record’s release was somewhat explained in comments made by Parker last May, when he revealed that inspiration for new material only came when he was at his lowest.

“Part of the thing about me starting an album is that I have to feel kind of worthless again to want to make music,” he told the New York Times .

“I started making music when I was a kid as a way of feeling better about myself, you know? The ironic thing is, if I’m feeling on top of the world or feeling confident or like everything’s good, I don’t have the urge to make music.”

Now, with the impending arrival of The Slow Rush on Friday, fans are steeling themselves to receive what might not be the record they’ve been expecting, but the record that certifies Parker as something akin to a musical genius.

Though it would be easy to compare  The Slow Rush to its disco and R&B-influenced predecessor, it would do both releases a disservice to do so. In fact, if you’re looking for a continuation of  Currents in this new record, you may be left wanting, though you’ll receive what is effectively the next logical step for an artist like Kevin Parker.

From its opening notes, it’s abundantly clear that  The Slow Rush is a record you’re meant to be listening to in full; appreciating the almost Boards of Canada-esque ’80s synth as it sweeps across each and every track, drenching the listener in throes of nostalgic intoxication.

Though opener “One More Year” sets the tone of the record almost immediately, it’s not an album that rests on its laurels and succumbs to a fear of moving from one’s comfort zone. In fact, even by the time “Instant Destiny” follows, it’s clear where Parker’s vision of the album may send the listener, though it’s impossible to predict what may come.

Undoubtedly though, while the main attraction of  The Slow Rush is Parker’s exceptional experimentation with psychedelic synthesisers and hazy, subdued stadium-rock numbers, the touch of mastery comes by way of the record’s immersive, cohesive nature.

Though clearly designed to be experienced as a record rather than a collection of singles, the inclusion of lengthy codas, stuttering vinyl-like endings, and instrumental breaks provide something of a loose, disorientating feel; allowing the listener to easily get lost within the record, and rely only on the musical guidance of Parker to bring you to safety.

Even singles such as “Borderline”, “It Might Be Time”, “Lost in Yesterday”, or the heart-rending “Posthumous Forgiveness” are so masterfully varied and unique that they don’t fall into the disappointing habit of sticking out within the tracklist, and taking one out of the overall experience.

But after almost five years of waiting, is  The Slow Rush the record fans have been waiting for? Does it live up to the hype? Thankfully, the answer is a positive one, with  The Slow Rush managing to buck any fears that Kevin Parker might have succumbed to the burden of expectations, and serving as one of his most accomplished releases yet.

A self-assured record that showcases a musical evolution from being ahead of the curve to setting the trend,  The Slow Rush is the record that Tame Impala fans have been waiting for. Could it one day be considered their best album? It might be too early to say, but it’s a pretty close contender.

Where  Currents feels like something of an ecstatic combination of Parker’s talents,  The Slow Rush is the comedown; the immersive follow-through that serves as the soothing nightcap, or the perfect start to the morning after.

Though Parker recently went on record to discuss his urge to completely give up on  The Slow Rush due to the “ creative strain ” it imposed upon him, never has an album served as more of a motivational tool than this has. After all, if this is the sort of product that results when pressure is applied, then you can be sure Tame Impala will be releasing diamonds for decades.

Tame Impala 2020 Tour Dates

With Special Guests Khruangbin

Saturday, April 18th Brisbane Entertainment Centre, Brisbane, QLD (All Ages)

Monday, April 20th Qudos Bank Arena, Sydney, NSW (All Ages)

Thursday, April 23rd Rod Laver Arena, Melbourne, VIC (All Ages)

Saturday, April 25th Adelaide Entertainment Centre Arena, Adelaide, SA (All Ages)

Tuesday, April 28th RAC Arena, Perth, WA (All Ages)

Tickets on sale now through  Ticketek

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Tame Impala: Slow Rush Tour

Impact highlights:.

• 13 Shows in 12 cities across North America
• 9,700+ Actions taken by fans in the Eco Village at shows
• $30,500 Raised to support REVERB and environmental causes
• 11,500+ Single-Use bottles eliminated at shows

See Impact Report

Tame Impala is partnering with REVERB to increase the Slow Rush Tour’s sustainability and take action on the climate crisis

Eco-village.

At every stop on the Slow Rush Tour, fans can join Tame Impala in taking action for people and the planet at the REVERB Eco-Village. Find the Eco-Village in the main concourse at every show and:

• Fight Single-Use Plastic Pollution: Donate for a custom tour #RockNRefill Nalgene reusable water bottle
• Fill-Up at the FREE Water Refill Stations: Ditch disposables by using REVERB’s FREE water refill stations
• Take Climate Action: Take the Climate Quiz to test your knowledge about solutions to the climate crisis and join Music Climate Revolution
• Connect with Local Nonprofits: Meet organizations that are creating positive impact in local communities and learn how you can get involved

Tour Sustainability

REVERB is working with Tame Impala , the touring crew, and management to reduce the environmental footprint of of the Slow Rush Tour. Efforts include:

Waste Reduction

• Reusable water bottles and insulated mugs for artist and crew
• Reusable or compostable service ware in catering and on buses
• Water refill stations throughout backstage area, catering, and on tour buses

Waste Diversion

• Recycling: Backstage, in offices and catering, and on tour buses
• Battery Reclamation and Recycling: Collecting dead batteries for recycling and donating batteries with remaining power to people in need
• Toiletry Donations: Collecting unused toiletries from hotel stays and donating to local shelters for people in need

Carbon Elimination

• Calculate tour carbon emissions from travel and transportation, hotel stays, venue energy usage, and more
• Eliminate emissions by funding global projects that directly eliminate an equivalent amount of greenhouse gas pollution

Additional Steps

• Green Cleaning Products for backstage, offices, catering, and tour buses

At Every Show

Artist Details

• Tame Impala