Tame Impala dropped their new album Deadbeat yesterday, and Kevin Parker marked the occasion with a rare acoustic performance for NPR’s Tiny Desk.
Armed with six acoustic guitars (one doubling as a makeshift percussion kit), the band delivered a stripped-back four-song set. They opened with “Borderline” from The Slow Rush, before debuting Deadbeat cuts “Loser” and “Dracula”. The mini-set wrapped with a soft-focus rework of the Currents closer “New Person, Same Old Mistakes.”
It’s Tame Impala’s second Tiny Desk appearance, but their first visit to the famous office space in person. The last time Parker took part was in 2020 with a Tiny Desk (Home) performance filmed in quarantine at the height of COVID, built around The Slow Rush.
Alongside the set, Tame Impala also shared a new clip for Deadbeat’s opening track, “My Old Ways” — a lo-fi, cinema verité-style visual that leans further into the album’s introspective mood.
In a new interview with Triple J, Parker spilled some secrets about the new live show, which they will be rolling out in the US later this month. “It’s in the middle. It’s a 360 show. I haven’t actually seen much of the show, I just got here yesterday but I think it’s really cool because we’re doing that 360 sort of show that a lot of bands and artists have done, but we’re doing it the Tame Impala way,” he said. “Which to me is a combo that feels new. We’re doing the whole Tame Impala thing in the middle. Whether we can do that in Australia I don’t know yet. But the only thing I care about live is that the show is great and special for wherever we are.”
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