Tame Impala

Lonerism Modular****

Time to fly higher than the sun all over again. You could extrapolate a lot about Tame Impala from the fact that their perch is in Perth, that western Australian metropolis located a continent away from the rest of the country. Perhaps isolation breeds music that, woozily and wobbily, sits apart from everything else. After all, truly outsider music should really come from places beyond the pale.

Some interesting things have happened in the two years between the band’s debut (Innerspeaker) and Lonerism to bring Tame Impala in from the outside. Suddenly Tame Impala are no longer men apart. Not only have many rhapsodised about the joys of the warm, hazy, cosmic music made by Kevin Parker and his cohorts, but that sound – the sound of a million fried hippies noodling their way to the moon and back – has become quite ubiquitous. Many freak-scene devotees are now on the same trip as the band.

If there’s a bigger audience waiting for Lonerism, it’s an album to match the greater expectations such a crowd also bring. An album of glorious psychedelic highs, synth riffs and hazy, hallucinogenic drifts, Lonerism has layers and layers of the wow factor.

Instead of embellishing his songs by bringing in the circus acts and sideshows of extra musicians, Parker continues to keep it simple with guitars, synths and drums. In these hands, though, less is most definitely more. The album sounds gigantic, a glorious maelstrom of shiny, dazzling noises and melodies. Vocally Parker sounds a hell of a lot like John Lennon, which is amplified on Why Won’t They Talk to Me and Apocalypse Dreams. Beyond that, smart, adventurous ideas are stoked and executed on Sun’s Coming Up and Keep on Lying. The sound of the new in-crowd broadcasting from way out there. tameimpala. com

Download tracks:Why Won't They Talk to Me, Apocalypse Dreams, Sun's Coming Up, Keep on Lying