Have we passed the peak of Tame Impala?
No artist achieves the level of success Kevin Parker achieved with Tame Impala without a plan. No matter how much they might want you to believe that everything just fell into place, that the world just suddenly started vibing with their sound, and they suddenly became the biggest band in the world, off the back of it, it’s basically never true. No one gets this level of success without a truckload of ambition, a meticulously detailed ten-year plan and a coterie of industry insiders who share your vision. No one apart from Kevin Parker, apparently.
I know I’m being played here. He almost certainly has all those things, but few people have ever more convincingly played the part of the accidental superstar than the Perth native. What’s more, is that the guy didn’t become the leader of one of the biggest bands in the world by joining any world-conquering trends. He came up from the same Australian psychedelic scene that gave the world King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard and Pond. Innerspeaker, his debut album as Tame Impala, was made on a whim in between production jobs and playing in other bands.
Yet still, by the release of 2015’s Currents, Tame Impala were as all-conquering a rock band as the Arctic Monkeys. Perhaps even bigger, as they headlined the 2019 edition of Coachella, sandwiched in between Childish Gambino and Ariana Grande. This is to say nothing about the influence Parker had on other artists. His production and songwriting found their way onto records by everyone from Rihanna and Lady Gaga to Travis Scott and The Weeknd.
All of which leads me to my biggest argument that all this just fell on Kevin Parker’s lap. That his band has been a ghost since 2020. Ever since their fourth album, The Slow Rush, dropped that fateful year, Parker’s work has been resolutely behind the mixing desk. Apart from some soundtrack singles for Dungeons & Dragons, Barbie and bizarrely, Minions: The Rise of Gru, Parker’s work has been producing and writing with the likes of Thundercat, Justice and most notably, Dua Lipa.
If Kevin Parker was a careerist, would this be the move? Build up all the momentum in the world and then retreat to the producer’s chair? Of course, it wasn’t as if Tame Impala didn’t capitalize on that momentum the first time around, but at the time of writing, it had been five years since a record and two since a gig. Those are the actions of a man who barely knows what a marketing strategy is, let alone follows one. According to an interview with The Guardian from 2024, a new Impala record is in the works, but with no release date on the horizon, have the band missed their mark?
The answer, emphatically, is no. At a time when pop music is almost militaristic in its rollout and development, Parker is still doing things at entirely his own pace and exploring his place within modern music. Whether intentionally or not, he knows that music fans have long memories and, with a billion plays on Spotify for ‘The Less I Know The Better’ alone, his work hasn’t left them. That’s the kind of cache that no one can ignore, however savvy they are or are not.
Sure, perhaps with a bit more application, Tame Impala could have had the kind of impact that spawned a thousand soundalikes. Spare a thought for the aforementioned Arctic Monkeys, though. They did have that impact and then some. All those soundalikes were godawful, and the Monkeys have only gotten more interesting (not to mention successful away from their native country) the further away they’ve gotten from meat and potatoes indie-punk.
The position Parker and Tame Impala find themselves in today is still enviable. Especially when, the moment a new album of theirs drops, legions of people will remember just how much they’ve missed them, and welcome them back with open arms. That is the kind of relationship to your fanbase that no label strategy can give you, and they’ve got it all to look forward to when the fifth album drops.
