Last Saturday, I stayed up to watch Tame Impala on SNL. And by that, I mean I waited until it was uploaded to YouTube, because do I look like a guy who owns a TV? Although I was happy to see one of the last few standing great rock bands back in action, I couldn’t help but feel underwhelmed by their material…

I have been a fan of Kevin Parker’s band since pretty much the beginning, when the psych rock wizard came out with his first album. At the time, the music industry was trying to find its footing in the streaming era, and some big changes were a-brewin’.

In hindsight, it’s probably the precise moment the table turned, and rock was defeated by urban genres, namely EDM, pop and hip hop. In a few short years, the musical style that had been dominant for the past decades would be in crisis.

Tame Impala’s Innerspeaker and Lonerism were signs of their time.

Dominated by crunchy guitar tones, their production was influenced by everything that was going at that time. They had the structure of electronic music, and a certain aesthetic that would find its echos in trap and R&B. No wonder artists like Kendrick Lamar and A$AP Rocky would hop seamlessly on samples form the group.

Parker’s third album, Currents, was an inventive mess. It included some great tracks, and, in my opinion, some pretty half-baked ones.

Tame’s mastermind had worked with Mark Ronson in the meantime, and I can’t help but feel like he had taken some bad cues from his mentor. He now shared Ronson’s tendency to balance flashes of genius with a general lack of direction.

Recently, Tame Impala released a new single. Titled Patience, a jumble of shallow phrases taken right out of a game of Madlibs - Sad Dude Edition. It was set to the tune of house keys and drums inspired by the good days of yacht rock. To me, though, the result sounded more like a Hype Machine indie electronic track circa a decade ago.

A first single can be tricky, but they also premiered Borderline, which just reaffirmed the direction Kevin Parker's project was taking. It sounds like dance music made by someone who has never been in a club.

I understand first hand how hard - read impossible - it is for an artist to keep making the music they became known for. People change, and an musician’s inspiration can’t be dictated. It’s the other way around, actually. My appreciation of his new work is so subjective, if he’s happy doing indie pop, that’s all that really matters.

This being said, where Currents showed promise was in its short, experimental snippets Nangs and Gossip, which both had a quality of Tame’s previous material, while showing a lot of new possibilities. Both under the 2 minutes, they appeared in the album’s tracklist like throwaways.

Or maybe they were lapsus from an indie musician who has appeared determined to become a pop mogul in recent interviews, a creative genius pointing his nose between snooze-fests like Eventually and Cause I’m a Man.

Maybe Patience and Borderline are the gold lamé pants Kevin Parker is trying on for size. He’ll wear them for a season and, embarrassed, he will trade them back for his torned skinny jeans by next year.

Basically, I don’t know what Tame Impala’s upcoming record will sound like, but I’m really excited to hear one that will come after that.