The Slow Rush is the, fourth studio album by Australian musical project Tame Impala, released on 14 February 2020. It follows the 2015 album Currents and the 2019 singles “Patience” and “Borderline”, with the latter serving as the first single from the album. Rooted in psychedelic disco music, the album was positively received by critics and reached the top 10 on many record charts around the world, debuting atop the charts in three countries and as well as on the US Alternative and Rock charts.

Kevin Parker said that his biggest takeaway from making both the previous Tame Impala album, 2015’s Currents, and The Slow Rush was to trust his gut instincts. “I don’t want to labor over music. More and more, that’s becoming a quality of music that I’m allergic to.”

The tone of the album is established on the “moody” space pop opening track “One More Year“, called “Parker’s most intimate song to date”, featuring a steady beat, glitchy loops, a robotic chorus, and a tremolo effect.

“Instant Destiny” begins with a falsetto-led melody and features xylophones, while “Borderline” has “mournful keyboards” and a disco groove. The funky/riffy and Jimmy Page-like “Breathe Deeper” “flits” between ravey pianos and ’80s Fleetwood Mac – “with a touch of Daft Punk’s ‘Da Funk’ thrown in the song’s final 90 seconds”. It is a ’70s/’90s R&B crossover with an “ascendant” piano line.

The overarching theme of The Slow Rush was said to be “the passage of time”. Many of the tunes on The Slow Rush have a “multi-level dimensionality”: the melodies “dwell in a sweet, idyllic late-afternoon mood” that can veil the “internal turbulence, doubt and emotional complexity lurking in the words”.

On “One More Year”, Parker ponders about his connection to the places outside his studio, and outside his own head: “Do you remember we were standing here a year ago / Our minds were racing and time went slow / If there was trouble in the world we didn’t know / If we ever cared we didn’t show”.

The second half of single “Posthumous Forgiveness“, a “reckoning” with Parker’s deceased father, is a “cathartic rumination” on their tricky relationship and Parker’s superstardom: “Wanna tell you ’bout the time / I was in Abbey Road / Or the time that I had / Mick Jagger on the phone”.

It Might Be Time, is focused on aging and maturity. Writing for Forbes, Caitlin Kelley, described “It Might Be Time” as: “an ode to ephemerality, as [Parker] confronts the aging process. It would almost be a rude awakening if his words didn’t dissipate in a dreamy haze of reverb. As he put it in an Instagram caption, “this quirky new song [is] about your own inner paranoid thoughts telling you you’ve lost your mojo.”

The ninth track on the Slow Rush album “Is It True” has been described as a disco track and a boogie track. The song has also been noted for being one of the more fun and happy tracks on the record featuring progressive and Vegas Strip-esk synthesizer work. The song has also been described as being a Pharrell Williams-like track.