Acclaimed Aussie JOVM mainstay Tame Impala‘s highly-anticipated fifth album, Deadbeat saw its official release today through Columbia Records. 

Deeply inspired by bush doof culture and the Western Australia rave scene,Deadbeat sees Tame Impala mastermind Kevin Parker recasting himself as a sort of future primitive rave act. Conceived in various locations over the last handful of years, the album was largely galvanized between Parker’s hometown of Fremantle and his Inijidup, Western Australia-based studio Wave House during the first half of this year. 

Renowned for being a perfectionist, Parker’s fifth Tame Impala album showcases an artist with a leveled-up mastery of songwriting but crafted with a newfound embrace of spontaneity. The result is a collection of remarkably catchy, hook-driven, club-friendly psych pop while being some of Parker’s most direct songwriting of his career to date. Sonically, there are timbres and textures that add new dimension to the material’s overall sound paired with a much richer, more playful vocal range. 

Lyrically, the album finds Parker channeling an endless bummer with a self-deprecating fuck-up of a narrator stuck in a hopelessly negative feedback loop, when he should have long had his shit together. We all know this kind of dude — and in some cases, he is us. Thematically, the album suggests raving as self-inquiry, self-medication in lieu of self-care and the kick-on as domestic bliss. Dance and sweat your troubles, stresses and concerns away on the dance floor, y’all. Reality can wait another day or two — hell, fuck it, another three. 

Deadbeat features the previously released “End of Summer,” “Loser,” “Dracula,” and its latest single, album opener “My Old Ways.” Anchored around a looping, twinkling piano figure, “My Old Ways” begins with Parker accompanying himself just on piano for about a minute or so, before the song quickly morphs into a mind-bending, trance-inducing bit of Larry Levan-like house with fluttering and oscillating synths and thumping beats. And at its core is a deeply self-aware, self-referential narrator, who is acutely cognizant that they’ve slid into a long-held negative pattern while simultaneously forgiving themselves and being self-flagellating for that backslide.

While being a serious banger, “My Old Ways” offers what may be one of the more empathetic portrayals of a fuck up that I’ve heard in some time. I’d argue that most of us could see some of ourselves in the song.

Directed by Kristofski, the accompanying video for “My Old Ways” features cinéma vérité footage the director took, following Parker throughout the process of recording the album in studios across the world, including his native Australia.