Deadbeat is the new album released by Australian music project Tame Impala on October 17, 2025. This is the producer, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter Kevin Parker’s, fifth full length album. In the 2010s he was drawing large amounts of attention to the psychedelic rock scene in Australia through largely successful and impressive albums such as Innerspeaker along with the astonishing Lonerism.
Though psychedelic rock’s popularity may be very much due to the creative roots of Tame Impala, that’s not where he would stay for long. Kevin Parker’s amazing talent and vision would soon take him into other musical genres such as on his 2015 album Currents.
If you weren’t around to witness the release of this album, it may be indescribable just how much of an effect it had on the music industry. While there were many other great albums that came out in 2015, Currents was truly special. This was due to its very deep and interesting crossover style mashup of different genres. Kevin Parker clearly created his landmark in the music industry with a sound of futuristic synthpop that couldn’t help but stand out among everything else. The sound is truly one of the most entrancing pieces of music to date, captivating pop, electronic music, hip-hop, and rock fans alike.
After making such a large staple in his career, it only made sense for Kevin to embrace the dance and electronic side of his music. Potentially, going even further into it would achieve greater results, which is where we got the hit album of 2020, The Slow Rush, an album that didn’t exactly sound like it took five years to make, but was still good nonetheless. It sounded like a sort of blander version of what Currents already was, like he achieved his perfect album and was trying to replicate it but just fell short. Though it might not have been downright horrible or bad, it was objectively the worst Tame Impala project at the time, but that title of worst may just change with the release of Deadbeat.
Deadbeat is an album that makes any of his others sound like absolute masterpieces. It seems like he’s trying too hard to make more new music but also keep that same feeling given by Currents. The album is full of mostly repetitive background dance music and very reverb heavy mixes that were honestly sort of bland and forgettable. But let’s go further into the songs themselves.
The album opens with the song “My Old Ways”, which has a melodic opening, using peaceful piano lines and calm vocals to warm you up for the synth beat drop about a minute into the song. This song was honestly one of the better pieces on the album and gave me high hopes for the rest of it.
The album then leads into “No Reply”, which, to be fair, isn’t exactly a bad song, it’s just nothing eye-catching. That was a similar feeling throughout most of the album with songs such as “Piece of Heaven” and “End Of Summer.” The album wasn’t necessarily horrible, it just didn’t even come close to his past work. It’s a bit under-par for what he usually puts out and it feels incomplete.
One other song that was a bit under expectation but I felt like needed to be mentioned is the song “Ethereal Connection”. It’s a seven minute long loop of industrial techno beats that just feel like background dance music and nothing too special. It truly just feels like a sort of wasted potential because of its length and what a let down it was.
There were, however, thankfully some songs that definitely stood out to me and didn’t make the whole album a flop. One of the few of those was “Dracula”, which was actually released as a single before the album was released as a sort of hype up. The song easily stands out from the rest as my favorite of the project. However, I could see why people don’t exactly see eye to eye on that because the song kind of sticks out like a sore thumb. The song seems like he was hoping for it to be making its way onto people’s Halloween playlists this fall as it features a very Michael Jackson style beat and some spooky lyrics to top it off. Nonetheless, it still keeps the themes of love and loneliness and easily remains at my number one spot on the album.
The other song that felt like it definitely delivered was “Loser”, which had a great use of rock mixed with some synth beats that blend together in a way that sort of brought me back to the feeling that Currents did. It also kept up the albums main themes of self-exploration, while also indulging into self-deprecation and succeeds in tying in the aspects of love that Kevin Parker is particularly known for.
Overall, the album was far from perfection, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’ve heard. I wish there were nicer things to say about this album, but there just isn’t. If I had to rate it I would give it a strong 3 to a low 4 as I definitely don’t think it’ll be an album that I just put on to listen to in the future. Two or three of the songs will most likely make their way to my playlist, but other than that it just felt like a bit of a let down. However, no matter what, I’ll never lose faith in Tame Impala; I just hope he’s able to look for a potential new direction for his music, and I can’t wait to see what the next album holds.
