Tame Impala – Deadbeat Review 

No way can anyone truly keep up with the cultural cycle. There are worlds out there, people of influence, you will never encounter. Be it their work, their words, or what they end up doing, it will pass you by at a time when its contemporary meaning is being moulded by those who interact with it. Just look at Brat and how people softly soured on Charli XCX. The same will come for the rest of these hitmakers, and it seems more deserved for Tame Impala and Deadbeat than anyone. The promise of a huge new return, a worthy follow-up to The Slow Rush, and yet it feels drained and passionless. Tame Impala does what he does best, pursues the attractive and glitzy tone of the times. He adds little to it but manages to capture the wavy, psychedelic pop tones about as well as expected. A gifted producer who knows how to create an emotionless mood board of sounds stylised better, elsewhere. Deadbeat is just that, though those who listened to Currents will have known this would be the case.  

Whether the domesticated antelope can craft further works of necessary styling is yet to be seen. He manages a few heartfelt opportunities throughout Deadbeat but it never amounts to more than what has already been offered. My Old Ways and No Reply feel like inevitable takes on ghosting culture and apologetic discourse for the actions now pushed into normal behaviour. It’s in defiance of this that sounds better, rather than playing along with the humdrum ideas and mentality which inspire these songs. Beyond its connotations of accepting this behaviour as part of life is a relatively uneventful instrumental concoction. Some dreadful lyrics littered throughout and when they’re made to be listenable, as is the case for Dracula, they struggle amid the messy mix. If it’s not the chimes and clangs of preset Yamaha work, it’s details of watching Family Guy on piracy-adjacent websites. There is a real desire from Tame Impala to be relatable, and to do that he rehashes the one message that still works.  

Songs like Loser and Oblivion are generally likeable efforts but hold within them examples of what’s going wrong in the studio for Tame Impala. Occasionally grinding to a halt to feature some new instrumental or wavy-sounding vocal flourish, a reliance which appears all too much on Deadbeat, is a real disappointment. Not My World has a catchy beat which is solid enough if you have exhausted all other listening options. Relatively tacky and disjointed material is what Tame Impala has on hand here. There’s a real need for music you can let yourself go to, the thump of Ethereal Connection offering that but without a moment of irony or interest in now genre sounds. It’s a straight and narrow release which converges with what is already expected of both the dance-pop style and Tame Impala too.  

Where some of the tones taken may be out of the ordinary and even a little leftfield a follow-up to The Slow Rush, Deadbeat never feels like anything more than a chase of contemporary thrills. We have heard it before; we will hear it again. Tame Impala is no longer leading, he’s just listening and repeating what he hears to listeners who are clawing at the hopes of finding themselves through generalities. Musically aimless at the best of times, but there is, within every song, a sincerity. It’s never enough to carry the song further than its very loose origins, but there is at least an attempt, a chance, to connect with Tame Impala further. When you do, though, it becomes clear there is little more to consider than what is heard that first time around. Afterthought? Deadbeat sure sounds like one.