Tame Impala fans would be wise to regard the band’s third album not as a Tame Impala album at all, but one by a band called something like Domesticated Eland. Although Kevin Parker once again plays virtually every note on this self-produced record, as he did on his previous two outings, the heady hit album Lonerism (2012) and its predecessor, 2010’s Innerspeaker, Currents sounds little like the work of Australia’s pre-eminent psychedelic rock hero.

The pedal-laden guitars are low in the mix. Instead, analogue keyboards whirr through 13 glistening tracks. Parker’s falsetto invokes Brian Wilson and Panda Bear – specifically Panda Bear fronting Daft Punk. There is one seven-minute opus here, the opening track Let It Happen. Blissed-out and party-ready, it recalls Daft Punk’s recent combination of vintage synth washes and live instrumentation, Random Access Memories. It’s not the only one. There’s a kind of monomania too, bringing to mind Kanye West’s 808s And Heartbreak.

Change is the theme, and the dark, organ-laden opening couplets of New Person, Same Old Mistakes could be addressed to all those alienated fans hoping for the Antipodean groove-king’s meisterwerk and getting a thoughtful yacht-rock record instead. “I can just hear them now/ ‘How could you let us down’,” Parker breathes, “They don’t know what I’ve found/ I see it from this way round…”

Perspective is all. Currents is one of this year’s great heartbreak records, one told from the point of view of the leaver. Parker is the villain of his own piece, having broken up with his partner, Melody Prochet of the band Melody’s Echo Chamber. So although many will come expectantly to Currents for the next instalment of synapse-lulling wooze, and baulk at the “dorky white disco-funk” (Parker’s quip) that has taken over his muse, it is definitely worth sticking around, if only to hear the inside of a male brain arpeggiating.

As he swirls wonky 80s funk around hazy electropop, Parker alternates between tenderness – as on the pivotal track, Eventually (“I know I always said that I could never hurt you/ This is the very, very last time I’m ever going to”) – and the borderline dickery of ’Cause I’m a Man. The candour is winning, as are the melodies, always previously shrouded in bong-session wigginess. The overall sound, though, is a little too pat, too wipe-clean.

While Parker’s home studio achievement is impressive – to recap, Prince-like levels of auteur autonomy – the sonic unity here means the tracks bleed into one another. Currents details a painful rebirth, but you’d never guess as much.