Each Tame Impalaalbum is like the next edition of a popular car model—there are no major overhauls but everything is a little sleeker, increasing efficiency while giving existing fans more of what they love. Tame Impala’s core sonic identity—drifting psychedelic rock fused with the melodic discipline of pop—was intact on its 2010 debut LP, “Innerspeaker.” On the two albums that followed, 2012’s “Lonerism” and 2015’s “Currents,” mastermind Kevin Parker refined the project’s sound to be more in line with mainstream sensibilities without losing its essence.

Tame Impala is a “project” and not a group because Mr. Parker, working out of studios in western Australia (where he grew up) and Los Angeles (where he now owns a home), is solely responsible for its recorded output. There’s a full-band version of Tame Impala led by Mr. Parker that plays live, but the records are his alone. He writes, plays, produces and mixes everything, and a mad-scientist mythology has built up around him. “Music for me has always been such a solitary, intense personal experience,” he told the New York Times last year. While Mr. Parker’s interviews are uniformly friendly and polite, they never reveal much. He’s an introverted guy who makes inwardly focused albums that sound extraordinary on headphones, where one communes privately with sound.

Creating something complicated entirely on your own can take awhile. “The Slow Rush” (Interscope), out Friday, is nearly five years in the making, and Mr. Parker deflected questions about its release date for much of that period while, ironically, becoming even more popular. Tame Impala headlined Coachella in 2019, and Mr. Parker has collaborated with stars including Lady Gaga and Rihanna. All of which put even more pressure on him as he readied his first album to fulfill the expectations of a pop blockbuster.

“The Slow Rush,” an impressive integration of cosmic expansiveness and taut melody, is worth the wait. He writes songs on bass guitar and has become a master of simple and memorable low-end lines that propel his music forward. Even at their dreamiest, Tame Impala tracks have a pulse that invites bodies to move. That tension—between loose, mind-expanding psychedelia and the tight focus of dance-oriented pop—is what powers Mr. Parker’s music, and “One More Year,” which opens “The Slow Rush,” embodies this duality. Mr. Parker’s production virtuosity is clear from the outset, as the song patiently builds, adding layer upon layer of gorgeous sound design, and then explodes in its breathtaking chorus. It reveals a brighter Tame Impala, one with a few extra beams of disco-ball twinkle.

Early on, Mr. Parker’s voice recalled the slightly nasal tonality of John Lennon’s circa “Revolver,” but it has softened in the years since. It’s almost always bathed in reverb, functioning like another instrument, one meticulously crafted element among many. And Mr. Parker likes to keep his voice low in the mix, which means that his words aren’t always easy to make out, even when the emotion of the whole comes through. But Mr. Parker’s lyrics are often sharp—he has an ear for clever lines and a talent for taking the details of his own life and configuring them into songs that could fit with anyone’s experiences.


The slowly unfolding “On Track,” built around piano and organ, seems to be about the endless wait for Mr. Parker’s new album and the pressure he felt to follow “Currents.” It’s his attempt to cheer himself up—he may feel like a loser for falling so far behind, but by most measures he’s doing OK. “Strictly speaking, I’m still on track,” he sings, and the odd use of “strictly speaking” is funny, exactly the sort of thing one might say to oneself during a pep talk.

Mr. Parker pokes fun at his own insecurities, but he’s also capable of real depth. “Posthumous Forgiveness,” a loping ballad, touches on Mr. Parker’s troubled relationship with his late father, who both nurtured his son’s interest in music and struggled to create a stable environment for his family. “Wanna tell you ’bout the time I was in Abbey Road,” Mr. Parker laments. “Or the time that I had Mick Jagger on the phone.” These are sweet lines that anyone who has accomplished something after the death of a parent can relate to.

On the closing “One More Hour,” Mr. Parker, who married his girlfriend in 2019, reflects on being a partner with responsibilities that extend beyond his work. It’s the longest song on the record and also the heaviest, with discernible guitar riffs, and it moves between discrete sections, with a lengthy breakdown that sounds like the spacey keyboard interlude on The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” Mr. Parker ponders giving his life to another (“How could I love this half for sure?”) and then decides he can do it, with one caveat: “As long as I can / Spend some time alone.” Perhaps he’s trying to carve out space for the next Tame Impala LP, whenever it might arrive. “The Slow Rush,” a sonic masterpiece that builds on Mr. Parker’s strengths, should buy him a few years of goodwill.

—Mr. Richardson is the Journal’s rock and pop music critic. Follow him on Twitter @MarkRichardson.