On Oct. 17, Tame Impala released its first album in five years, Deadbeat, and just barely missed the mark for what you’d expect from the award-winning electronic music icon.
Tame Impala is an Australian music project by Kevin Parker. It had its first big hit in 2010 with the release of its debut album, Innerspeaker. Since then, it has won multiple awards, including a Grammy. The project has been widely praised, and rightfully so. Tame Impala’s beautiful electronic and earworm-iness quality is undeniably appealing.
Tame Impala hasn’t had an album release since The Slow Rush in 2020. Since then, it has only been singles and collaborative work. That is, until the release of Deadbeat. Since it has been a long time since a major release has come from the project, I worry it may have partially lost the style so integral to Tame Impala.
Before the album’s release, three songs — “The End of Summer,” “Loser” and “Dracula” — were released as a series of EPs leading up to the release. These three pre-released songs are also the ones on the album that live up to the glory of the Tame Impala name. They’re all impeccably catchy with the irresistible keyboard the project is known for.
“Dracula” reminds me of Tame Impala’s best, so its popularity on TikTok makes sense.
“Loser” is a reference to artist Beck’s hit 1994 song of the same name, with Beck featured in the music video. The song also references Tame Impala’s 2015 hit, “The Less I Know the Better,” which includes the lyrics, “She said ‘It’s not now or never / Wait 10 years, we’ll be together.’” These lines are referenced in “Loser,” which goes, “I had to tell ya, it’s now or never.” This, of course, connects to “Loser” being released roughly a decade after “The Less I Know the Better.”
Beyond that, there isn’t much to say about the other songs on Deadbeat. Other than the pre-released songs, Deadbeat feels as if it were trying to emulate a Tame Impala album. As a Tame Impala fan, these other songs simply aren’t very enjoyable compared to the other work. It’s not bad, but rather very middle-of-the-road.
There is something to be said, however, about what’s good in the album. It just doesn’t live up to the expectation one has when listening to Tame Impala, but it is very close. It has all the instrumental makings of a great album, but Tame Impala is also known for its lyricism, which is just okay on Deadbeat.
There is a sort of uncanny valley within music where if something is just a little off from what you are looking for, it has a huge drop in quality. With that being said, the album has 95% of what makes the best Tame Impala albums, but is missing a foundational 5%.
I don’t want it to be true that Tame Impala has lost its magic. What I hope is Tame Impala continues to keep creating music and getting into a rhythm that can support the style of the project, rather than barely missing the mark every half-decade. I hope for more work with the project, hopefully to prove this was really just a stumble for it and not the new norm. But no matter what, I’ll always tune into what is arguably the greatest electric rock artist of the last 20 years.
