I’ve been a Tame Impala fan for a while now but have never listened much to their (his? the choice of pronoun when discussion Tame Impala is an immense source of stress in many lives, Im sure. I’m gonna go with their) debut album, InnerSpeaker. I enjoy the adventure that is Lonerism so much. The songs are incredibly dense and theres new sounds to hear on every listen. That one man can create such dense songs is wondrous, and (hopefully) the subject of this post.
I’ve been thinking about Tame Impala’s drums. They’re frequently my favorite part of a Tame song: the drums on Mind Mischief make me feel like I’m sliding down a spiral slide into madness. The drums at 2:38 in It Feels Like We Only Go Backwards is one of my favorite moments in any Tame Impala song. The drums go absolutely bananas out of nowhere, its an explosion. I’ve never played the drums but it seems entirely impossible that a human could play that.
The drum rhythm is always so strong and consistent! Listening to Desire Be Desire Go from InnerSpeaker theres this great looped drum that compliments the slightly repetitive nature of the song and Kevin’s disinterested, bored drawn. Near the 3:00 mark of the song where theres an instrumental break – everything falls away and there’s several scratchy and distorted guitar- but the drum loop chugs along unaffected. The automaton drummer is unstoppable. Don’t even try. I get a similar vibe from the drums on the next song, Alter Ego. I’ve been wondering if Kevin Parker actually plays the drums or if its a pluggin on a keyboard or something. Or maybe he plays a few measured and loops this through (i could easily google this but wanted to get these thoughts down before I had a definitive answer.) The often monotonous and rhythmically (it took me 5 minutes to spell that word) pristine drums sound mechanical, industrial, robotic. I really think it contributes to the aesthetic of isolation on the album (I’m talking about InnerSpeaker and Lonerism here). While on a surface level most Tame Impala songs sound like the product of a typical 4 person band, closer listens will reveal that its all 1 man alone in his room. For this reason I’ve always loved the image on the back of the Lonerism vinyl.
It’s exactly how I pictured him making this album. Is that a cymbal in the top right corner? I’ll pretend I didn’t see that. The lonely drums are a great contrast to what i find to be a warm and vivacious bass in most songs. Maybe that’ll be another post, I need to get back to modeling this blood vessel.
No band could make this music. Within Tame Impala’s dense melodies there are fingerprints from the isolation in which the music was made.
This Vibe Has Flown 