Tame Impala – Lonerism (Europe)

2 × Vinyl, LP, Album, Reissue

Again recorded and produced almost entirely by Kevin Parker in studios, planes, hotels and homes around the world, and mixed by the trailblazing Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips / MGMT), Lonerism’s sound is not so much reinvented as completely redrafted and stretched way, way out. It’s a quantum leap forward for the band, the seeds of which were sown shortly after their debut album ‘Innerspeaker’ was mixed.

Featuring twelve new songs, Lonerism’s most apparent advance is in it’s synthesizers – there’s swathes of them cutting melancosmic shapes across almost every track. There’s still the searing guitar lines, bouldering drums, free bass and of course Parker’s voice, but now there’s heavily mournful pads and sunshine lead lines from an army of analogue explorers in the mix.