The psychedelic rock band finally got to meet the fan base that grew across generations during the COVID shutdown at Buku ‘22.

Tame Impala knows how to conjure an aura. Smoke machines billow a foggy haze onto the stage while their silhouettes stand like church steeples in the distance. Deep lime green fades to seafoam as strobes flash to the rhythm of the drum fills. Cutting through the smoke are lasers that can be seen from outer space. The heavy bass line of “The Less I Know, The Better” rolls over the crowd as they jump up and down. “Alright, are you ready to get messy?,” Kevin Parker teases casually before launching into a glittering synth explosion. He walks around the stage with his head in his hands, spiraling through his own atmosphere. 

Most people in the crowd for their headlining set Friday night at Buku have waited over two years for this. Tame Impala’s fourth album, The Slow Rush, was released in February of 2020, less than a month before the world would shut down and be stunned into COVID silence. It felt all too fitting that an album about time and its endlessness would drop when it did. Songs that were originally written about relationships and their end now felt like apocalyptic predictions. “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 had a care, it didn’t show,” Parker sings over a robo-choir and house music beat in “One More Year.” It felt like a full circle moment in the audience, where everyone realized that they had survived long enough to finally see it played live. Couples swayed in each other's embrace. A girl in her twenties sat on a man’s shoulders, spreading her arms into the music. Teenagers hugged and sang the lyrics to each other, happy drunk and smiling. We survived long enough for music to happen again and be physically experienced with each other.

In the time that it took for Parker to go from patiently waiting in his home for the world to open back up to taking the stage at Buku ‘22, his audience expanded. A band that millennials had once gatekept and clutched tightly to their hearts was now a millenial/Gen Z crossover band. Thanks to the hold that Tik Tok has, Gen Z has discovered music that strays from the ultra mainstream. All of Tik Tok’s various corners offer niche communities that recommend music in a non-gatekeeping way. If there were previous barriers between Tame Impala and Gen Z, they were now removed. They were half of the people on the barricade. 

The fact that songs released over seven years ago can still have young people screaming the lyrics with their full chest is a testament to how powerful and timeless Tame Impala's psychedelic rock is. “But I know that I’ll be happier / And I know you will too,” thousands of people echoed with their arms stretching out to the sky, hands reaching for the moment that will soon slip away. “Eventually / Ah / Eventually / Ah,” they scream louder, closing their eyes to the bittersweet lyrics as the light paints all of us electric blue. 

Halfway through the set, a giant circle of strobe lights begins to lower onto the stage while Parker and the band shred to the instrumental track “Gossip” as if a UFO is abducting them and taking them from Earth for the first and last time. A collective “Oh shiiit!” is heard amongst the bros in muscle tees and rave gear, while the rest of the audience gasps. Distorted guitar that rings out for almost five minutes builds the tension, until finally falling into the opening riff of “Let It Happen,” while confetti shoots into the air and falls like ashes to the ground. It’s a modern day Pink Floyd moment. 

They finish with “New Person, Same Old Mistakes,” submerging us in a psychedelic VHS fever dream before they start to make the city mad past the 11:00pm sound ordinance. The lights turn on, and people begin to migrate towards the exit. “I can’t believe we just saw that,” someone near me says to their group of friends. “We were so close.” The feeling still hangs in the air, even though the moment is over.

Also at Buku

• a review of Tyler, the Creator’s headline set on Saturday night