Kevin Parker has changed the cover and the conversation at the same time. The face that once hid behind kaleidoscopes now turns up in black and white: family snapshots, a gawky teenager, the ordinary mess of a life that used to be kept out of frame. '
Deadbeat' sounds like that looks.
Tame Impala's colours haven't drained so much as stepped back; you can feel the air in the room, the scuff on the floor, the kick landing first and everything else arranged to respect it.
Kevin Parker has always joined dots between psychedelic drift and the hypnosis of a long, evolving club track. Here, he stops pointing at the dots and draws between them. The thrill isn't that he's "gone techno" - he hasn't - but that he trusts a drum and a bass line to carry the load while the rest of the picture stays light on its feet. Keys add a chapel-cool glow around the edges; guitars sketch a silhouette; when colour does arrive, it's late and chosen, not poured on by habit. The kick is the truth; everything else arranges around it.
The title tells you what he's up to lyrically, and it isn't a sulk. 'Deadbeat' is a persona he can throw against the music to see what sticks - self-drag as release, not pity. The voice sits drier and closer than Parker usually allows, lines landing plain and unadorned, the bluntness doing a job the old dream-haze never could. '
Not My World' is the closest he comes to the bare-bones mission he gave himself at the start: stripped, in the room, happy to leave the skeleton visible. '
No Reply' flips the long push-pull between wanting to feel normal and enjoying being different into momentum rather than myth, the dance chassis turning a confession into a moving part.
