Deadbeat

“That’s always something that I get a kick out of: just shaking up expectations,” Kevin Parker tells Apple Music, and after nearly two decades at the helm of Tame Impala, the Australian auteur has left no expectation unshaken. Throughout his zigzagging career, Parker has played the role of headband-sporting hard rocker, cinematic psychedelic architect, indie-R&B crossover king, Diana Ross’ Minions soundtrack dance partner and Dua Lipa’s go-to studio Houdini, but each pivot has only reinforced his reputation as alt-pop’s premier purveyor of hazy-headed dream-state vibes. While Tame Impala’s fifth album Deadbeat initially took shape thousands of miles away from his studio in Perth, it nonetheless represents something of a full-circle move for Parker, embracing the coastal environment, isolationist methodology and liberating blank-slate ethos that spawned his earliest forays into recording. “The album officially started in Montecito,” explains Parker, who decamped to the Californian coast with his wife and toddlers in tow. “My thing is I get an Airbnb somewhere on the coast—I just find places literally as close to the water as you can get. Staring at the ocean for me just helps me get lost, and there’s a tranquillity that comes along with it.” And from that oceanic inspiration, Parker was reminded of an essential truth: The beach is a great place to hold a rave. Parker has, of course, been incorporating electronic textures into his work since 2015’s Currents, albeit in a manner that still adapted easily to Tame Impala’s arena-rocking live spectacle. But with Deadbeat, he surrenders fully to the spartan, strobe-lit allure of dance music, breaking down his traditionally maximalist approach to the most essential raw materials. The opening “My Old Ways” functions as a microcosm of Parker’s journey up to this point: Beginning with an iPhone recording that sounds like a dusty old John Lennon demo, the track hitches its core piano melody onto a hard-hitting house pulse, seamlessly bridging Parker’s classic-rock roots with his current beatmaking mindset. He spends much of Deadbeat savvily toeing the line between pop economy and dance-floor abandon. The cheeky, horror-themed “Dracula” is destined to join Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” in the canon of Halloween electro-disco delights; “Piece of Heaven” gorgeously unfurls like an ’80s synth-pop spin on Pet Sounds; and “Afterthought”—an 11th-hour addition recorded while the album was being mastered—is an irresistible New Order-esque earworm that makes it clear why this Aussie outsider has managed to infiltrate pop’s A-list inner sanctum. But Deadbeat’s most thrilling moments come on extended out-of-body experiences like “Ethereal Connection” and “End of Summer”, where Parker layers psychedelic synths over tough techno rhythms like fluorescent paint splattered on a concrete wall. And yet, even as he’s traded trippy guitar solos for blitzkrieged beats, Parker’s deeply personal songwriting has retained the wistful, self-interrogating quality that fortifies the emotional bond with his listeners. “I’ve always had a sick satisfaction from being hard on myself in my lyrics,” he says. “For me, it’s freeing to make beautiful music and then put a sticker on it that says, ‘That piece of shit!’ It flips around all those feelings that have followed me around my whole life and gives them purpose.”