Tame Impala were once a record collector’s idea of a rock band. Then they were a rock band that was one guy and that one guy was also a record collector. 2015’s Currents took that proposition as far as it could go, and when Kevin Parker dropped “End of Summer” as the lead single from his fifth studio album, Deadbeat, something else became apparent: Every crate-digger eventually finds his way to the dancefloor.
Deadbeat is Parker’s electronic and dance album, but it’s also his new father album, as his first daughter was born the year after the pre-pandemic The Slow Rush. As such, he throws in some dadly nods to Family Guy and Pablo Escobar, while still treading familiar emotional territory for Tame Impala: jealousy, paralysis, and social anxiety. Parker digs into his psyche not necessarily through lyrics but by paying homage to the music he ostensibly loves, like Jeff Mills’ “The Bells” (“Not My World”), the Beatles (“See You on Monday”) and, apparently, DJ Khaled and Rihanna’s “Wild Thoughts” (“Obsolete”). Here are five takeaways from the album.
An Intimate, Unvarnished Opening
Deadbeat opens with a demo track of Parker singing over a house piano riff. It’s a meaningful gesture—stripping aside the glossy varnish of Currents and The Slow Rush, conjuring the image of Parker alone in a room, surrounded by the highest of high-end recording equipment. That piano, fuzzy with room sound, reappears as a motif throughout the album. Later, on the skeevy synth-funk single “Loser,” a murmured “fuck” wanders its way into the final mix, like the fossil record of an off-the-cuff earlier version. For an artist obsessed with craft, Parker has gotten more comfortable letting the seams show.
Berghain Down Under
Parker takes a little bit from a lot of different dance subgenres across Deadbeat. There’s the dembow tropical house cut “Oblivion,” the two songs that sound a lot like “Thriller” (“Dracula” and “Afterthought”), and a nearly eight-minute prog-house banger that breaks out into spurts of Berghain bass (“Ethereal Connection”). Pop music and techno are not incompatible forms—the Field’s Axel Willner made a whole career out of slicing up golden oldies into microhouse tracks that could still get stuck in your head—and the extended outros throughout Deadbeat yearn to spin out into proper 12" mixes.
Same Ol’ Mistakes
“Feels Like We Only Go Backwards.” “New Person, Same Old Mistakes.” How long can regression be a selling point? Deadbeat’s opening track is titled “My Old Ways,” as in “Back into my old ways again,” and Parker is not eager to specify what those old ways are. His lyrics, which have always skewed vague, are slipperier than ever. Still, he does seem to have achieved some growth. “I might be crazy, senses betray me/Are you parading all your lovers to bait me?” Parker sings on “Afterthought,” not quite as completely anxious as he was when he said, “She was holding hands with Trevor/Not the greatest feeling ever.”
A Small Piece of Heaven
In a sea of outré production choices, “Piece of Heaven” is particularly mind-boggling. A small orchestra of synthetic strings sound like several Enya songs—“Orinoco Flow,” for sure, and maybe “Even in the Shadows”—played at the same time. Then comes the electro-funk beat, and a disembodied, sampled voice drifts in like those on Air France’s 2008 No Way Down EP. Parker delivers a rare unrepentant love song that manages to end on a cliffhanger: “It won’t make a difference/You can lie all your life.” Arriving at roughly the midpoint of Deadbeat, “Piece of Heaven” is just that, mostly thanks to its sheer audaciousness.
Daddy Chill
- “You’re a cinephile/I watch Family Guy/On a Friday night, off a rogue website” (“No Reply”)
- “Now I’m Mr. Charisma, fuckin’ Pablo Escobar/My friends are saying ‘Shut up, Kevin, just get in the car’” (“Dracula”)
- “Man, it’s a crisis, I’m never like this/That’s how my life is, you couldn’t write this” (“Loser”)
- “This room is a shambles/But I think it’s fine/To you, it’s untidy, maybe/To me, it’s divine” (“Piece of Heaven”)
- “Just tell me what is up, yes, really, what the fuck” (“Obsolete”)
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