Tame Impala: "Eventually"
When Tame Impala released “Eventually”, the fourth single from the Currents, a caption on Instagram noted, “Last one before the album.” If that’s true, the track marks the end to a particularly masterful streak for the Kevin Parker-led Australian band, and the start of something else. After the dramatic gestures of the future-RAM epic “Let It Happen” and quiet-storm confessional “‘Cause I’m a Man”, followed by the chugging, sepia-tone miniature “Disciples”, this stately, finger-snapping synth ballad might, at least superficially, risk getting drowned out in the promotional noise. It’s too well-crafted for that fate, though.
“Last one before something else” might also describe the theme of “Eventually”. Like someone pulling the Band Aid right off to abbreviate the pain, or just following Robyn’s advice from “Call Your Girlfriend”, Parker is inflicting harsh emotional wounds as mercifully as his plainspoken narrator can manage: This might hurt a little bit, but it won’t be that way forever, right? It’s easily a breakup song, although as Parker told Under the Radar, it’s ambiguous enough to leave room for other interpretations. And anyway, here he’s less focused on what’s ending than what might later begin. “I know that I’ll be happier/ And I know you will, too,” he repeats in the soft-focus chorus, pausing just long enough before adding the title phrase. Eventually. It’s the hope the word contains, potentially false, that makes it devastating.
The song arrives at a time when Tame Impala find themselves in their own phase of transition. They’re kaleidoscoping outward after Lonerism‘s electronic-savvy expansion of 2010 debut Innerspeaker; they’re building on their covers of late-period Michael Jackson and late-period OutKast, as well as their frontman’s appearance on the latest Mark Ronson full-length. In a recent Reddit AMA, Parker singled out “Eventually” as a Tame Impala song that’s still “very moving” for him. If it’s a harbinger of what to expect from Currents‘ nine remaining unreleased tracks, I know that many of us will be happier, and that “eventually” means July 17. But for now, it’s enough to be moved, in motion, suspended in time.
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