TORONTO - Kevin Parker, mastermind behind the Australian psychedelic rock outfit Tame Impala, spent two years in near-complete solitude while crafting the band's aptly titled second album "Lonerism."
He cherished it. And then he went on tour — where he was surrounded by people pretty much all the time — and he remembered what loneliness really felt like.
"In a way, it kind of reminds me of the person that I am when I'm writing these songs," Parker said in a telephone interview during a tour stop in Dallas. "It's called 'Lonerism,' but it's really not about physical isolation — it's really about being around other people and trying to connect with (them) and having trouble doing so.
"When I was a genuine loner, and really just sort of hung out by myself, I was never really affected by other people. I didn't really feel like a loner. But when we started touring a lot with the first album, and being thrust in front of people ... that's when you feel like a loner, when you're having such a hard time connecting with the rest of the world."
And yet, through his brightly melodic, strategically smeared psych-pop, Parker has been connecting in a pretty notable way.
Most of Tame Impala's upcoming dates — including shows Saturday at Toronto's Kool Haus and March 11 at Montreal's Metropolis — are sold out. (Another Canadian date is set for May 27 at Vancouver's Commodore Ballroom.)
This after receiving laudatory critical praise as deeply stacked as the band's multi-layered synth tracks. "Lonerism" was featured high on lists of the best albums of 2012 by publications including Pitchfork, the Guardian, Mojo, Filter and NME, which named Tame Impala's sophomore effort its top record of the year.
It's a relief to Parker, if only because the exhausting process behind "Lonerism" didn't exactly leave him brimming with new ideas.
"I feel like I kind of blew my brain out with this album," he said with typical honesty. "I didn't realize how much I was ... getting more obsessed with recording, with making the songs and making them better.
"When I finished this one, it was such a load off my shoulders."
Without that unusual attention to detail, "Lonerism" wouldn't have sparkled so. Playing almost all the instruments himself, Parker meticulously tweaked each element into a dazzling mosaic of jazzy drums, crying keys and fuzzy guitars, calling to mind a more organic-sounding Flaming Lips.
(The Beatles and '60s psych are also comparisons cited frequently enough to almost bristle the low-key Parker. He points out that he used almost exclusively synthesizers from the '80s to craft the album and suggests the impression is informed by the band's long hair, then genially adds: "But I'm not really going to complain about it.")
Then there are Parker's plaintive lyrics, uncommonly unadorned emotional statements direct enough to be moving whether he's murmuring about thwarted ambition on "Apocalypse Dreams," unconvincing attempts at self-confirmation on "Be Above It," or dimming love on "Feels Like We Only Go Backwards." (The particularly glum "Why Won't They Talk To Me?" is probably self-explanatory.)
Parker put more of himself in "Lonerism" than Tame Impala's guitar-heavy debut "Innerspeaker." In large part, he says that was owing to the fact that he assembled so much of the newer record while he was alone, so he didn't need to sing the emotionally raw lyrics to engineers or fellow bandmates.
"I think I just had a bit more confidence to actually sing about the stuff I wanted to sing about," said Parker, whose distortion-drenched garage-rocker "Elephant" is now soundtracking ads for BlackBerry's Z10.
"I was kind of just in my bedroom for about two years — well, not my bedroom, the room next to my bedroom."
Even with all of Parker's forlorn ruminations on missed connections, the music never really sounds mopey — a credit to his skill with a melody.
He says he actually tries to rein in his penchant for "stupid, cheesy pop melodies," and sometimes the resultant effect sounds as though a sunshine pop tune is being forcibly held underwater.
"I actually kind of smother songs and stop them from coming out," he said. "It just doesn't feel like I could put that kind of super-pop melody in the Tame Impala environment and have it still sound cool.... I guess I'll just use them for something else. I'll give them to a pop star."
Sounds lucrative, he's told.
"Oh man. It's the dream."
For now, his imagination is occupied with augmenting Tame Impala's live show. When he started making "Lonerism," he wasn't sure they'd ever be able to perform it live.
"I assumed we were going to stop touring," he said. "I was like, well, most of these songs have like 20 guitar and synth overdubs and like drum machines — stuff that was never going to be able to happen live. Without using backing tracks, of course, 'cause I draw the line at backing tracks."
He figured it out eventually. Now, he's consumed with trying to make their performances better.
His "current obsession" is writing new passages of music to drop into existing songs to make them different each night, and he can't stop experimenting with the various gadgets that clutter the stage under his feet.
"It sounds wanky," he says, with characteristic self-deprecation.
But it's also sort of essential.
Even though his schedule is tightly packed through July, he considers this the first break he's taken from "feeling like he needs to record music all the time," since he actually began working on "Lonerism" before "Innerspeaker" was even released.
He's enjoying it, but he says he needs the constant distraction that music grants him. And while he acknowledges that the effusive response to the album has been "vindicating," there's a part of him that misses being sequestered at home, tinkering and tinkering with his sonic collage until he's smudged every instrument and drop of distortion together just right.
"I think a lot of the details I obsessed over were kind of unnecessary — like I mean, I probably could have done it in a couple months instead of a couple years," he says, laughing.
"But I obsess over those things a lot of the time because I'm in love with the process of obsessing over it. It's my favourite thing to occupy my mind, rather than like, reading a book or watching a movie.
"I just prefer to think about whether this song is amazing or (crap)," he adds, in fact using a different four-letter word. "The process of doing it is almost a bigger part for me than actually finishing.
"Because once it's finished, it's finished, and it belongs to the rest of the world. It doesn't belong to me anymore. It's not something I can think about anymore.... So when I'm working on it, that's the real life of it for me."
