Ranking every Tame Impala album from worst to best
For a man with not that much material to his name, Kevin Parker has had an outstanding influence on the face of modern music. The Tame Impala leader has just four official studio albums in his discography, and with EPs, bonus tracks, and special one-off singles accounted for, Parker’s discography comes out to somewhere near 75 songs total.
And yet, you can hear traces of Tame Impala anywhere. Parker’s signature mix of phased drums, hazy vocals, ragged indie rock, and disco pop has become something akin to its own genre. The eternal sound of summer bliss, Tame Impala have inspired everyone from hopeless stoners to mega-famous musicians to take notes. Parker is now lauded as a visionary artist of his time – not bad for one guy from Perth.
Across his main body of work, Parker has made a conscious effort to make each release different. The hard-hitting space rock of Innerspeaker stands in contrast with the isolating grandeur of Lonerism, just as the heady heartbreak of Currents runs against the heated euphoria of The Slow Rush. It’s all part of a continuum, one that Parker continues to redefine with every new release.
Although he only has four albums to call his own, each one is rich with that special something that makes Tame Impala so identifiable. But which one is the best? That’s what we’re going to find out today. Taking all of his albums under the name Tame Impala into account, here are all of Kevin Parker’s releases, ranked in order of greatness.
Every Tame Impala album ranked:
4. The Slow Rush
The worst thing that can be said about The Slow Rush is that it’s the most “Tame Impala” sounding record that Tame Impala has yet put out. That’s certainly not a bad thing: by 2020, Kevin Parker had found his sound and perfected it. Head trips, psychedelic instrumentals, and airy vocals all play against a background of disco funk. It’s a lovely thing to hear.
That being said, there’s nothing truly surprising to be found on The Slow Rush. The album opener ‘One More Year’ is as trippy and kaleidoscopic as Parker has ever been, and things only get poppier and more fun from there. The pure pop bliss of ‘Borderline’ will forever be a classic Tame Impala track, and songs like ‘Lost In Yesterday’, ‘One More Hour’ and ‘Is It True’ prove that Parker is truly the master of his domain.
But as a whole, The Slow Rush feels the most paint-by-numbers of all the albums in Tame Impala’s discography. It’s a great time to be had, and whenever Parker releases his next LP, it will be ripe for a true revival and renaissance. But for now, The Slow Rush sits at the bottom of the list.
3. Lonerism
As Parker toured behind Innerspeaker, new ideas continued to flow out of him. Like Led Zeppelin did for their own sophomore effort, Parker put together Lonerism in bits and pieces during off days around the world. The piecemeal production style solidified Parker’s reputation as a solo perfectionist, something that came through in the album’s lyrics and themes as well.
Lonerism contains some of the most essential tracks to the entire identity of Tame Impala. For someone who’s never heard of the band before, all you have to do is show them ‘Mind Mischief’, ‘Elephant’ and ‘Feels Like We Only Go Backwards’ to get the full picture of what Tame Impala is. It’s not the rest of the album is bad – deeper cuts like ‘Keep on Lying’ and ‘Why Won’t They Talk To Me’ are notable highlights – but they fail to rise to the heights that those three songs are at.
As a whole, Lonerism is more baroque and ornamental than anything else in the Tame Impala catalogue. It’s also probably Parker’s darkest album, where the feelings of isolation appear to be more stifling than freeing. But Lonerism rises out of the ashes with a more direct pop sound than its predecessor, pushing Parker ever closer to the mainstream. Even though its follow-up would be Parker’s true coronation, Lonerism contains some of his highest individual peaks and achievements.
2. Innerspeaker
For a couple of years, Kevin Parker was simply happy to put out home recordings online and let the music flow without much direction or organisation. That all changed with Tame Impala’s debut album, Innerspeaker, a hard-hitting indie rock album that folds in elements from psychedelic rock, folk, and lo-fi. Somehow both self-contained and expansive, Innerspeaker announced Parker as a true original.
The most guitar-heavy album that Parker has ever made (and probably will ever make), the immediacy and intimacy of Innerspeaker benefit from some of its rougher edges. You can hear Parker try and make sense of songs like ‘Jeremy’s Storm’ and ‘Desire Be Desire Go’ in real-time. While tracks like ‘Lucidity’ and ‘Solitude is Bliss’ have their own special polish, it’s the raggedness and rawness of Innerspeaker that makes it unique in the Tame Impala canon.
There was nowhere for Parker to go but up after Innerspeaker, but returning to the close spaces and sudden attack of the album is one of the most rewarding experiences fans can go through. It would almost sound like a different band had Parker’s signature voice not filled out each song, and even though this version of Tame Impala is probably long gone, it remains a perfectly preserved moment in time where anything could happen.
1. Currents
Tame Impala was indie rock’s best-kept secret before 2015. And then Currents came out, alerting the rest of the world to the genius of Kevin Parker. While some may bemoan the pop-friendly sounds found on the album, the truth is that Parker has yet to equal the masterful harmony of disco beats, synth instrumentation, heady atmosphere, and heartbreaking reality that makes Currents perfect for just about every music fan.
It’s the kind of album where all you have to do is list the songs: ‘Let It Happen’, ‘The Less I Know The Better’, ‘Yes I’m Changing’, ‘Cause I’m A Man’, and ‘New Person, Same Old Mistakes’ at the top of the list. But every track on Currents has its essential qualities. The album is sequenced expertly to flow in and out of electronic heartbreak, so much so that the journey at the end makes you want to go right back to the beginning.
Currents changed everything for Kevin Paker and Tame Impala. Soon, everyone from Rihanna to Kanye West to Lady Gaga wanted a piece of him. It remains his crowning achievement: a rare true-blue indie rock record that has been accepted and canonised in the greater history of popular music. Will Parker ever be able to top it? Probably not, but who knows? The man who made something as amazing as Currents can surely do it again.
