photo: Emma Bedlin

When Tame Impala released their fifth album, Deadbeat, late last year, reviews were mixed—here was Kevin Parker, indie rock’s most beloved psychedelic slacker, dipping his pinkie into techno and house music. Now, as Parker and his 5-piece band loop the world on their Deadbeat tour, stretching more than 60 dates across 13 countries, they’re bringing a new batch of rave-ready songs to their long-legendary live show. On July 15, they brought the party to Philadelphia.

To casual fans just waiting to hear “The Less I Know The Better,” this shift didn’t necessarily land with enthusiasm. But anyone arriving with an open mind was likely to have it melted.

Tame Impala is playing in the round on this tour, and as every arena seat filled up, folks were staring down at a circular stage draped in colorful wires, blinking lights, and metal—like a computer that some boy genius built in his garage. Considering Tame Impala has essentially been Parker tinkering with and warping sounds since his 2008 debut, the stage felt like an endearing callback; a homespun origin story inside a sold-out arena.

The band opened with the stomping “Apocalypse Dreams,” a 2012 throwback to Tame Impala’s first two albums, when they were a psychedelic rock band emphasizing the rock. Slick dance hit “Borderline” came next, and the show’s impeccable vibe began to blossom.

Matching trippy lights with trippy sounds has long been Tame Impala’s strong suit, but they’ve built something special on the Deadbeat tour. Massive screens moved and spun around the stage, broadcasting Parker and the band through a hazy, surrealist lens. Lights bathed the entire arena in blues and reds. A pyramid of rainbow light surrounded the band. Lasers, confetti, and strobe lights turned the place where the Sixers play into kaleidoscope of color.

But the night’s most interest moments were when Parker brought out his latest experiments. The band transitioned from their most straight-ahead rock song, the chugging garage rock anthem “Elephant,” into one of Deadbeat’s most straightforward electronic tracks, “Afterthought.” The band dove in, but the crowd was less energized.

From there, the cameraman followed Parker offstage and backstage—broadcast documentary-style on the big screens—and into the bathroom. The shot blurred as he stood in front of a urinal, then followed him back into the arena, where he climbed atop a second stage for the show’s deep dive into Deadbeat. Alone but for a bunch of pillows, lamps, synthesizers and sequencers, Parker folded his body onto the ground, twisted some knobs and unleashed “Ethereal Connection,” his new album’s heaviest bit of techno.

At times, he’d lay back on the pillows, fold his hands behind his head and grin—a camera hovering above him, inviting the crowd into what felt genuinely like an intimate moment of creation. Musically, these moments may have gotten a more powerful response in a more fitting setting: a dark warehouse, or an underground club. But even though people didn’t lose their minds dancing to this dance music, Parker succeeded in building a moment that felt real and personal.

Parker returned to the mainstage and gave the people, all the people, what they came for: ubiquitous songs from his mega-hit 2016 album Currents, like “Let It Happen,” “Eventually,” and “New Person, Same Old Mistakes,” before a confetti-blasted encore that included “The Less I Know The Better.”

Bands face the new music quandary with every tour—Parker’s muse clearly lies in the music that got a relatively smaller response from his crowd. But instead of rushing through the new songs to get to the old ones, Parker took his time, played around, amused himself and had some fun.

Truly, it was a joy to witness.