Tame Impala Grapples with the Past on "Lost in Yesterday"

Fresh off being announced as one of the marquee acts at Bonnaroo 2020, psych-rock titan Tame Impala (i.e. Kevin Parker) has shared “Lost in Yesterday,” another new single from his forthcoming fourth album The Slow Rush, due Feb. 14 on Interscope. The new track is further evidence of Parker’s interest in out-and-out dance music, an outgrowth of his last record, 2015’s Grammy-nominated Currents.

As befitting an artist (and human being) in flux, “Lost In Yesterday” finds Parker looking back on his past, considering where he came from and how he views those memories from the complicated vantage point that is the present. The track’s propulsive low end carries the listener along, like the mind being beckoned down Memory Lane, while pretty synths evoke the rosy tint of Parker’s recollections. “When we were living in squalor / wasn’t it heaven? / Back when we used to get on it / four out of seven,” he remembers in a breathy falsetto before admitting, “Now even though that was a time I hated from day one / eventually terrible memories turn into great ones.” Rather than resigning himself to the power of time and memory to distort, Parker urges the listener to reckon with the past as honestly as possible, concluding, “If it calls you, embrace it / if it holds you, erase it.”

“Lost In Yesterday” is the fourth single from The Slow Rush following “Posthumous Forgiveness,” “It Might Be Time” and “Borderline.” March 2019 one-off “Patience,” which at that point was the first new music from Tame Impala since Currents, isn’t included on the new album.

Tame Impala Grapples with the Past on “Lost in Yesterday”