Modern indie is incomplete without Tame Impala, the psych-rock turned synth-pop brainchild of Perth’s Kevin Parker. He’s a truly gifted musician, writing and playing each part on every song across his albums—one man’s vibrant and dramatic interrogation with loneliness and romance. It’s rock music to lose yourself in, just as it’s earwormy pop music. Capable of writing hits like ‘The Less I Know the Better’ and ‘Feels Like We Only Go Backwards’, Parker is unquestionably one of Australia’s most talented music exports.

Parker’s knack is being a musical chameleon: The shift from psych-rock to more electronics from 2010’s Innerspeaker and 2012’s Lonerism to 2015’s Currents was a massive moment. It forever altered the indie music landscape as Parker’s spaced-out neo-psychedelic concoction spawned an offshoot of imitators. 2020’s subdued The Slow Rush coasted on Currents’ success with fuzzier, Balearic beats, but his legacy was cemented. Despite being plagued by second-guessing and anxiety about his music—for instance, he believed Currents was a mistake on its release—he earned stardom as a master in genre crossover. Today, Parker’s written for the Barbie movie, dance-pop star Dua Lipa, and French electro duo Justice.

Note the last collaboration—Parker has electronic music on his mind. In hindsight, the jump from Lonerism to Currents was less jarring than The Slow Rush to Deadbeat, his new album that’s inspired by bush doofs and abandoning his perfectionist tendencies. Techno has always inspired Parker, but rock’s gatekeepish purism pushed him away from ever publicly indulging in it. Deadbeat was initially conceived as a techno record to release anonymously—if the teaser single ‘End of Summer’ is anything to go by, that premise showed real promise.

A staggering genre switch-up into levitating tech house driven by programmed drums, the song would be unidentifiable in Parker’s catalogue if not for his voice. Unsurprisingly, it was met with cynicism from many, including myself, and written off as Parker, a non-house producer, imitating house music. Closer listens eventually said otherwise: The out-of-body harmonic bridge midway through shows maybe Parker does have the sauce. It’s the kind of uplift from dance music that’s even capable of catapulting you off your desk chair to dance in your bedroom. Given Tame Impala is a multifaceted musical beast, Parker could surely pull off a whole album’s worth of house.

Tragically, ‘End of Summer’ is an outlier on Deadbeat. Instead, Parker stands conflicted at a genre crossroads, drawing upon too many disparate places at once. Parker’s dismissal of his obsessive tendencies strips Tame Impala’s maximalist sound to a barebones quality, so much so that Deadbeat doesn’t know what it wants to be. It’s far from the anonymous techno album he conceived, due to how much pop he’s let seep through the cracks. Some of it is great as ever—the Halloweeny ‘Dracula’, the guitar-forward self-deprecating ‘Loser’, and Michael Jackson-esque ‘Afterthought’ are undeniable highlights in Tame Impala’s pop realm. However, it’s missteps like the reggaeton ‘Oblivion’ that firmly sit at the lower echelon of Parker’s catalogue. Its dissonant first minute is inexcusable, with Parker’s echoed cooing entirely at odds with the stumbling rhythm. ‘Piece of Heaven’ is an Enya homage—why is there new-age music on what’s meant to be a “dance” record? Listening to the ballad is more perplexing than knowing that fact. Later in the tracklist, ‘See You On Monday (You’re Lost)’ disrupts its surrounding high-tempo cuts by ambling with primitive synths—so little happens during its runtime, it pains me to call it a demo. These shortcomings make the five-year wait between albums all the more gruelling.

Don’t fret—if you have a keen ear for electronic music, you’ll manage to appreciate those particular moments scattered across this indecisive record. Parker labels ‘Not My World’ as the blueprint for Deadbeat’s sound, strange as that may seem after my rant. Murky, deep house steadily chugs with Parker plainly voicing a stream-of-consciousness, until dropping into a nocturnal, latter-day RÜFÜS DU SOL groove. If played on a massive sound system at an outdoor rave, slotted in someone’s DJ set, it’d work. The same goes for ‘Ethereal Connection’, which is textbook minimal techno he successfully pulls off. Yet, when you can listen to seasoned veterans like Underworld or Tiga, is it worth sensationalising this genre shift? These songs both fail to do what the rest of his catalogue accomplished: something new.

In the process of abandoning his perfectionist tendencies, Parker has neglected what made his music unique and irresistible in the first place: the groove. Considering his strongest skill is his drumming ability, sacrificing that for drum machine loops was an incredibly risky move, which hasn’t paid off. Listening to many of these new songs after his older, danceable ones like the enthralling ‘Let it Happen’, the kaleidoscopic ‘Alter Ego’, or the larger-than-life drum-forward ‘Patience’ makes one thing abundantly clear—these beats are dead. If you’re dancing, you’re either in or out—Parker’s gone halfway.

Deadbeat is out now on streaming platforms. Follow Tame Impala for updates on Instagram.