Great Music While High: Tame Impala and Psychedelic Rock

Music, much like another favorite vice, is something that can change the perspective of the user. A good bowl will take your troubles away just the same way that a great song will. For some, a cup of coffee is enough to change their perspective just enough in the morning to get them going; for others, maybe it’s a beer or bowl at the end of a long day. Others still, a comfortable chair and good pair of headphones.

It’s the idea of perspective that makes psychedelic rock such a Weedist-friendly genre of music. From Pink Floyd to The Flaming Lips and everything before and since, many great bands associated with that particular style of music go so far as to tailor their lyrics and entire image to be smoker-friendly (I’ll let you insert the first example that comes to your mind.)

Lonerism by Tame Impala

However, a recent review of the latest album from Australian rock band Tame Impala got me thinking about the larger state of what exactly makes something psychedelic. The reviewer commented that by using modern technology to make a record that sounds like it was made in the 60s or 70s, Tame Impala “tap into the progressive and experimental spirit of psychedelic rock, and not just the sound.”

Wikipedia (since isn’t that just the first place one looks for answers 2013?) defines psychedelic as the “name given to the subculture of people who use psychedelic drugs, and a style of psychedelic artwork and psychedelic music derived from the experience of altered consciousness that uses highly distorted and surreal visuals…to evoke and convey to a viewer or listener the artist’s experience while using such drugs.” And I’d say that’s a pretty good definition, in that it perfectly sums up what makes Lonerism, the aforementioned latest record from Tame Impala, such a great listening experience.

One of the best examples comes 8 tracks into Lonerism, on “Keep On Lying”. The overall mix has a ton of different things going on- in addition to the very tasty warm analog bass and drums and the synth and guitar lines, random bits of conversation and other noises and sound clips drift in and out of the song’s final section. For many lesser bands, this same tune would be a section to just jam out, which Tame Impala most certainly does; however, but expertly mixing the other sounds into the final product, they create a song that goes beyond your basic rock and roll ditty and is something much better. The music is able to bring the listener out of themselves and live in a different world, if only for 4 or 5 minutes. And to me, that’s the core of what all external vices, from weed to music, is really supposed to do.

The rest of the album contains nothing but great tunes, from the paranoid “Why Won’t They Talk to Me?” (which has one of the catchiest individual drum parts in recent memory) to the blissful “Feels Like We Only Go Backwards” (which is a perfect song to toke up to, fellow Weedists!). This is Tame Impala’s second release, which comes two years after their excellent debut “InnerSpeaker”, which also contains some fine pyshedelica in its own right.

To put a point on what has been a fairly rambling essay, psychedlic rock, when done well, makes you feel like you’re on (or sometimes even better then when you’re on) drugs. When you listen to some great psychedelic rock like Tame Impala while you enjoy your favorite drug of choice, the results are nothing short of transformative.

Check out other posts from Weedist’s Great Music While High series!