Song Exploder - Tame Impala - It Might Be Time

Episode Date: April 22, 2020

Tame Impala is the project of Kevin Parker, a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer from Perth, Australia. Since putting his first EP in 2008, Tame Impala has been nominated for two Grammys and won eight of Australia’s ARIA Awards. Multiple albums of his have been named best of the year. As a producer, he has collaborated with Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, The Weeknd, and more. The most recent Tame Impala album is The Slow Rush, which came out in February 2020. For this episode, Kevin chose to take apart the song, "It Might Be Time." songexploder.net/tame-impala

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs, and piece by piece, tell the story of how they were made. I'm Rishi Kesh Hirwe. This episode contains explicit language. Tame Impala is the project of Kevin Parker, a songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and producer from Perth Australia. Since putting his first EP out in 2008, he's been nominated for two Grammys and won eight of Australia's ARIA Awards. Multiple Tame Impala albums have been named Best of the Year. And as a producer, he's collaborated with Lady Gaga, Mark Ronson, The Weekend, and more. The Most Recent Tame Impala album is The Slow Rush, which came out in February 2020.

For this episode, Kevin chose to take part the song, It Might Be Time. My name is Kevin Parker. I'm from Tame Impala. I just started working on this album, and I had no idea what the album was going to sound like. So I started working on this song, and it was definitely just the creativity. creative trying whatever phase, which I think is important. These songs were coming off the back of doing a bunch of co-labs. So this is kind of when I was starting to get back into working by myself again, which is nice. I guess jamming with other people, there can be kind of an anxiety that it's not going anywhere.

One of the reasons I like to work alone is that it doesn't matter if you spend 12 hours and get nowhere. You just have to kind of separate yourself from the end result being perfect. I remember the first kind of little jam I had with myself. I was just playing around with some chords on a keyboard. I kind of like it to be a sound I haven't used before because I feel like it's a more kind of fertile ground for thinking of new things, you know, having a new sound. So if you use the same sound twice, I think you kind of gravitate to the same thing you've done before.

And then I just kind of jumped on the drums, just record it over the top of that. Just slowly trying to find something. I like to think that things that I arrive at musically and sonically are serendipitous. Happy accidents. And this album I wanted to allow that to happen even more. But I like to have drums sounding good off the bat

because a bad drum sound for me is just the least inspiring thing. I can't work on a song. Even when I just record drums for messing around, it's still kind of this like sound that I've dialed. in. So after this demo I found a little bit that I liked and made that into a chorus. And then I kind of built the song around that. And what's funny is the final drums on the song are actually those drums from the same demo, just chopped up and processed. It's got a real kind of like late 90s, chopped up drum break sound, but like smashed. Raw stem for those

drums are really dry. It's kind of funny. you're switching between the two. How does that happen? How do you get it to sound like you're playing the drums 8,000 times harder? Just lots of tricks. That question in itself, making the drums sound like that, accounts for most of my life in the studio.

The sounds in this song I love, on their own. Almost everything in the chorus is distorted, except the keyboard part. The bass is distorted, the drums are distorted, that lead line that. comes in is distorted and has one of the gnarliest synth basses I've made. Like if you solo that and the drums, that's the best way to know if you're feeling it or not. I like to write a melody over chords that are stuck in my head.

I mean like get them rock solid into your head. The important thing is to like digest the chords first. So I replayed them on just like a spaced out synthesizer. And I made an eight minute loop of it and I just had it going. all day every day, all around the world, wherever I was. I'll be sort of walking around. I'll just sort of have it blasting in the studio, doing what I'm doing, dancing around, I don't know.

And I don't know what possessed me, but I just started singing. The hook kind of sounded like someone teasing someone. You know? So then I thought it could be cool to make it like your own subconscious, teasing you. And that's where, like, it might be time to face it, came from. I had this idea for a clip of someone going around trying to live their life and these like almost gremlin like kids just jumping out from behind corners

when they're trying to do something cool. You know, they're like trying to skateboard down a hill or something and then like these kids run out and just like kick the skateboard out, you know? And sing that chorus lyric to them. Because that's kind of how I saw it is like internal gremlins. You know what I mean? At that point I felt like it had this kind of rock hip-hop almost thing, like something that any RD would do.

You know how they do rock, but it's clearly a hip-hop song, even though it's like distorted guitars and distorted drum kit. Once I've got the whole thing of music where I love how it feels, it takes a lot for me to be able to go and write something new for it to add to it. Like I just love the idea of taking everything. that was from this kind of like six hour time, like just this one session in the studio where I just had this burst of ideas. I love the idea that everything that is in the song came from that little burst of creativity. So with this one, I was like, oh, I've got these other chords that I wrote

in that demo. And I liked the wandering nature of the chords. And so I was like, that could be a verse. There's something about like an unexpected chord change or unexpected timing of a chord change. that just does it for me. They just kind of subconsciously gravitate towards. The chords on their own are so disjointing, but with the vocals that kind of make sense. The song starts with deciding to go home early on a night out. Because I feel like we've all done that,

and for whatever reason, those have always been a source of, like, defeat. For me, like, just going like, oh, fuck it. You know what, guys? I'm out. In like the Uber on the way home, you're like, maybe I'm not good at partying after all. And then the chorus comes in slamming. Like, you've lost it.

Oh, boom, there it is, like a punch in the face. But also, you know, this song was also meant to be kind of playful and almost kind of tongue in cheek. It's earnest, but it's also kind of funny, you know. Lighthearted. I remember that's kind of what me and my brother used to teach each other about in high school. You know, like, ah, you peaked. You peaked in year eight, man.

Like, that's how we'd get under each other's skin. See, that's the thing about this song is I wanted to make sure that it wasn't specific to any kind of like situation or age or anything. I'm 34, so I could be thinking that. But then, like, someone that's 64 would be thinking the same thing. And someone that's 24 and 14, you know? He wasn't as cool as used to be. And now, here's It Might Be Time by Tame Impala in its entirety. Visit SongExploder.net to learn more about Kevin Parker and Tame Impala.

You'll also find a link to stream or buy this song. I have a new album of my own coming out on April 24th. It's been about 15 years since I last put out a full length. And this is the first one that'll be out under my own name, Rishikesh, her way. I started making Song Exploder when I was feeling lost in my own music career. And then for over a decade, I've gotten to have these incredible conversations about the process of making music talking to other artists. And it made me completely rethink my relationship to music and my way of writing songs. And this album is the product of all of that.

It features contributions from some of my favorite artists, including some folks that you may have heard on this podcast, like Iron and Wine, Kevin Morby, Vagabon, Fenlily, and the producer Phil Weinrobe. I'm going to be on tour playing in cities across the U.S. starting in April. and I'm trying to bring the spirit of the podcast with me. So every show that I'm playing will begin with a conversation about the album with a different amazing guest moderator in each city, like Adam Scott, Samin Nasrat, Jason Manzukas, Josh Malina, Minjin Lee, Ken Jennings,

John Roderick, Austin Cleon, and more. They're all going to be my conversation partners on stage, and then I'll play with my band. The album is called In The Last Hour of Light, and the first couple songs are out now. You can listen to the music and get tickets for the shows on my website, RishiCesh.co.co. Or just go to songexploder.net slash live.

That's songexploder.net slash live. Thanks. Song Exploder is made by me and producer Christian Coons, with production help from Olivia Wood and illustrations by Carlos Lerma. Song Exploder is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX, a collective of fiercely independent podcasts. You can learn more about. out all our shows at Radiotopia.fm.

You can follow SongExploder on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at Song Exploder. And if you'd like to get a Song Exploder t-shirt, you can find them at songexploder.net slash shirt. My name is Rishi Keish Hureway. Thanks for listening.