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Project-mastermind Kevin Parker returns with the latest and most possibly final snippet of material in anticipation of the forthcoming studio album, the Slow Rush, out on Modular, February 14th.
By Louis Addeo-Weiss
Existentialism has always been something that seeps its way into Kevin Parker’s lyrics. Early Tame Impala releases such as “Solitude is Bliss” and “Be Above It” are examples of this.
Breaking through is something our subject here has longed for and with his 2015 release Currents, we began to see, from a commercial and personal level, Parker begins to do this.
Currents took the studio-auteur and his project to heights before unseen, becoming the premier headlining act on the festival circuit.
Now, nearly five-years on and following a list of A-list collaborations, Parker finds himself again ready to trek down the land of pondering life at the many different angles it presents to us.
On “Lost in Yesterday,” the fourth of twelve confirmed tracks for the project’s upcoming fourth studio album, the Slow Rush, Parker muses on past anxieties while reflecting on some of the beauties surrounding his life then.
“When we were livin’ in squalor, wasn’t it Heaven?… Eventually, terrible memories turn into great ones.”
The same man who cried out in 2012’s “Why Won’t They Talk to Me?” off of his landmark sophomoric effort Lonerism is the same person working with the likes of Kanye West, Travis Scott, Mark Ronson, just to name a few. The point to this is is a central theme to Parker and his music, that of growth and shedding the skin of our past to embrace the now.
Musically, the track continues Parker’s unique fusion of psychedelia, a genre he has come to be seen as its modern-torchbearer, to his undying love of R&B and pop music.
Synths carry the song on multiple fronts, serving as soft bedding for Parker’s layered falsetto, while not shying away from their ability to burst out of their cage in a lazar beam-like fashion akin to something one may come across playing an arcade game in, say, 1983.
And while many psych-rock purists yearn for the days of distortion and live drums in Tame Impala releases, the electronic percussion present here only do more justice for the instrumental backing to Parker’s nasal-wails.
For those who have seen the group perform in concert, one can envision Parker emoting the lyrics through his frequent head turns from side-to-side, an unacknowledged trademark only until now.
However, the song’s true highlights come in the form of a groovy-bassline that would make even the best early-80s synthpop and new wave groups gasp in envy. This is one characteristic that made tracks such as “the Less I Know the Better” and “the Moment” off of Currents so infectious and signaled the true-genius in Parker’s ability to write accessible, yet still rather complex pop music.
The song’s chorus is one most Tame Impala fans will joyously sing for a while as well, with only new admirers to be made once it hits foreign ears.
“’Cause it might’ve been somethin’, who’s to say? Does it help to get lost in yesterday? And you might’ve missed somethin’, don’t say ‘Cause it has to be lost in yesterday.”
With what looks to be the final piece of new music we get prior to the release of the Slow Rush on Valentine’s Day, February 14th, Parker has again shown us that pop music mustn’t always bow to the conventions set forth by its forefathers.
Listen to “Lost in Yesterday” here, as well as previously previewed tracks “Borderline,” “It Might Be Time,” and “Posthumous Forgiveness.”
