Tame Impala — the brainchild of Kevin Parker — has officially returned with Deadbeat, his fifth full-length album and one of his most striking reinventions yet.
Released today (October 17th) via Columbia Records, the project finds Parker diving head-first into the pulse of Australia’s ’90s bush-doof culture, reimagining his psych-rock project as something rawer, crunchier, and more rhythmically primal.
The record lands after months of teasing with singles “Loser”, “End of Summer”, and “Dracula”, which became Parker’s biggest chart success to date, cracking both the ARIA Singles Chart and Billboard’s Hot 100.
The release is accompanied by the video for album opener, “My Old Ways”, directed by Kristofski and cut from cinéma vérité footage captured across Parker’s recording sessions around the world.
On Deadbeat, Parker strips back the glossy sheen of 2020’s The Slow Rush for something more instinctual. Written and recorded between Fremantle and his Wave House studio in Injidup, Western Australia, the album balances hypnotic club beats with the warped melodic hooks that have long defined his sound. There’s a new looseness to it, too — a spontaneity that adds grit to his usual kaleidoscope of synths and fuzz.
Critic Grayson Haver Currin describes the record as “a last act of resignation and acceptance, with Parker finally coming to terms with the person he has always been and may always be… suspended in an emotional stalemate, wondering if he can be more than he knows he is.”
It’s a fitting observation for an artist who has spent the past decade bending genres and expectations in equal measure. Since debuting as a modern psych-rock revivalist on Innerspeaker, Parker has grown into one of the global music industry’s most in-demand producers and collaborators, working with the likes of Dua Lipa, The Weeknd, Lady Gaga, SZA, Travis Scott, and Mark Ronson.
Parker’s mantle tells the rest of the story: four GRAMMY nominations (and a win with Justice for 2024’s “Neverender”), 13 ARIA Awards, a BRIT Award, as well as billions of streams — including more than two billion for “The Less I Know The Better”.
Tame Impala’s ‘Deadbeat‘ is out now via Columbia Records.
