Music Reviews: Tame Impala

"The Slow Rush" is preoccupied with the passage of time, so it's appropriate that the fourth album by Australian pop auteur Kevin Parker has arrived a year late. For Parker's one-man band, 2019 was supposed to be a triumphal year - and indeed it was, with headline dates at Coachella.

Parker missed the deadline, however, for his follow-up to Tame Impala's 2015 psychedelic pop breakthrough, "Currents." Instead, he released only a handful of songs last year, including one cheekily titled "Patience."

That song didn't make the "Slow Rush" final cut, but a dozen other tracks did, including the sleek pop-soul nugget "Borderline," altered from its original 2019 form. (Parker is a tinkerer who is not finished until he's finished; he's credited as producer and songwriter, and plays all the music himself.)

On 2010's "Innerspeaker" and 2012's "Lonerism," Parker came on like an acid-tested '60s throwback, seeking stoner bliss. He's since evolved as a master pop craftsman. "The Slow Rush" at first seems like a lighter-than-air mood piece, fluttering from the sky like the candy-colored confetti at an artfully directed Tame Impala show.

Repeated listening, however, reveals angst lurking beneath the Day-Glo rock, disco and house music surface. "Posthumous Forgiveness" considers things left unsaid in his relationship with his late father. And on "It Might Be Time," the 34-year-old confronts a reality all aging rock stars one day face. "You ain't as cool as you used to be," he sings. "You ain't as young as you used to be."

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