After dropping two songs this summer, Kevin Parker has announced a new Tame Impala album—his first in five years. The follow-up to 2020’s The Slow Rush is titled Deadbeat and arrives October 17 via Columbia. Check out the cover artwork for the album below.
Parker ushered in Tame Impala’s return in July with “End of the Summer,” which arrived with a trippy split-screen music video. Then, yesterday, he also rolled out the new song “Loser.” Tame Impala tapped Joe Keery—the Stranger Things and Pavements actor who records his own music as Djo—to star in that music video where, for a brief few seconds, he swaps places with Parker to tell the tale of a dejected burnout.
Deadbeat, according to a press release, “is deeply inspired by bush doof culture and the Western Australia rave scene.” Parker worked on the album in his Fremantle hometown and at his studio in Injidup, Western Australia. The 12-song project will include both “End of the Summer” and “Loser.”
Although The Slow Rush came out five years ago, Parker has been plenty busy since then. He won his first-ever Grammy Award, the Best Dance/Electronic Recording trophy, for the Justice collaboration “Neverender.” Then there’s all the film contributions, with Tame Impala recording “Journey to the Real World” for the Barbie movie, “Wings of Time” for Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, a remix of “Edge of Reality” for Elvis, and the Diana Ross collaboration “Turn Up the Sunshine” for Minions: The Rise of Gru.
Of course, Parker has lent his skills to a number of other songs over the past couple years, too. The Tame Impala mastermind recorded “No More Lies” with Thundercat, “One Night/All Night” with Justice, “New Gold” with Gorillaz, and “Call My Phone Thinking I’m Doing Nothing Better” with the Streets. That doesn’t even include all the remixes artists like 070 Shake, the Crowded House, and Justice have asked him to do, or him helming the production board for Dua Lipa’s Radical Optimism.
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