Building from the sparse beginning of an oddly percolating heartbeat rhythm and a barely discernable whispered mantra (“Gotta be above it, gotta be above it…”), presumably voiced by bandleader Kevin Parker, to waves of undulating synthesizer, layers of heavily affected guitars and the barely more expansive but more assertively delivered lines, “Know that I gotta be above it now/And I can’t let them all just let bring me down,” Australia’s Tame Impala sets the agenda for its second album on the opening track, “Be Above It.”
The music goal, as with all great psychedelic rock, is to take the listener on a journey to alien worlds—sometimes beguiling, sometimes inscrutable but always wildly imaginative. The lyrics, meanwhile, seek to transcend the everyday in that fabled journey toward what ol’ Aldous Huxley called “the white light.”
What, exactly, is Tame Impala trying to rise above?
Arriving just in time for Halloween and appropriately titled The Haunted Man, the third album from British singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Natasha Khan — better known as Bat for Lashes — is a gorgeous but unsettling dreamscape that slowly but relentlessly works its way into your subconscious. Haunting indeed.
