Change The Record: Tame Impala – “Deadbeat”

I’m recovering from wisdom-tooth surgery at the time of writing this. It’s been rough; I haven’t been eating well, I have been rinsing with saltwater daily, and my gums feel like they’re ripping themselves apart. Usually, the hack critic thing to say here is that somehow the album was worse than my recovery—and I’ll be honest, it really wasn’t— but I will say it did add a little bit of extra misery to the whole process.

Tame Impala is the musical project of multi-instrumentalist and songwriter extraordinaire Kevin Parker. Yes, Tame Impala is just one guy—congrats if this is your first time learning that. Parker is a veritable icon at this point. He’s been putting out music since 2010, and his output, while not huge, is consistently solid up until now. His early records, “Innerspeaker” and “Lonerism,” were both fantastic—not only among the best of their respective years but among the best psychedelic albums of the 2010s. They were rich, catchy, and nostalgic, yet still modern in their approach.

In 2015, things changed when Tame Impala released their biggest album, “Currents,” which shifted away from the straightforward psychedelic rock of the first two records towards a hybrid of rock, pop, electronic music, and even hip-hop influences—all blended into one record. It was a major success, not just commercially but artistically, containing some of Parker’s best material to date. 

Unfortunately, “Currents” would spark a turn for Parker that I’d consider for the worse. With the next record, “The Slow Rush,” Tame Impala would lean even further into the pop side of things, ditching much of the pure psychedelic rock in favor of synth-pop and neo-psychedelia. This shift did produce some highlights, especially the singles, but it also resulted in a record that felt far cleaner and more streamlined—and as a consequence, much less engaging.

With the announcement of this new record, spotting the very eye-catching title “Deadbeat,” I was hoping for something rougher and more on edge, something that really let Parker branch his sound out from last time. Unfortunately, dreams are not real, and this year seems dedicated to crushing my hopes more and more every day. This album was abysmal. 

Let’s start with the opening track, “My Old Ways,” set over this house music-sounding piano loop, which pairs with Parker’s vocals as well as an egg pairs with a concrete slab. It only really starts picking up near the end, and even then, the flickering synth arpeggios in the back end just sound awkward. Things don’t pick up with the next track, “No Reply,” which sits over a completely lifeless drumbeat and synth melody that makes the track sound like it’s constantly buffering—once again matched horribly with Parker’s vocals, which have added effects to make the whole experience sound more stilted.

Other lowlights of this album include “Piece of Heaven,” which, for the first minute or so, just sounds like a bad Animal Collective b-side, until it reaches further in and you’re met with these awful stomp-clap drums that sound straight out of a Chainsmokers song. Then there’s “Ethereal Connection,” a mediocre, underbaked piece of deep house that ends with a brief vocal section from Parker. None of this, though, matches up to the awful “Oblivion,” in which Parker tries his hand at this tepid-electronic-dancehall type instrumental that sounds like it was made for a completely different pitch than what Parker is giving it. It’s a baffling listen, it genuinely sounds unfinished, but nope, it’s here–and boy, it sucks.

The album isn’t entirely awful. I enjoyed the bouncy, tuneful “Dracula,” and I liked “Loser” for the most part, even if it sounds like a weaker pastiche of his previous records. Still, overall, I’m given very little here to enjoy. I have no idea how any of this was made by the same guy who gave us incredible psychedelic journeys like “Let It Happen,” or “Apocalypse Dreams,” or even “Posthumous Forgiveness” from the last album. Sometimes it really does feel like Tame Impala only goes backwards. 

If you’re wondering about all the other tracks I haven’t mentioned, well, they’re mostly bad too. Most start with a questionable main melody that gets torturously forced into the primary part of the song, like “Obsolete” or “See You on Monday,” which have openings that sound awful before slowly shifting into plain old boring. And then there’s the closer, “End Of Summer,” which is a brutal seven minutes of the most plain and basic drumbeat, and Kevin giving the limpest vocals he can over it all.

I really didn’t expect to be as mean about this album as I am, and frankly, it makes me both sad that I have to criticize an artist I like this much and angry that an artist who has proven himself so good in the past would release something this awful. Guess there’s always next time. Let’s just hope this isn’t an omen of future releases to come. I will not stand and just “Let This Happen,” Parker.