The magic of Parker's music – what makes his recordings so restless, hesitant and dynamic – is based on the tiny but crucial difference between perfectionism (infinitely boring) and obsession (infinitely interesting). “Everyone thinks I’m a perfectionist,” Parker said. “This supposed narrative of someone orchestrating an entire album is Brian Wilson's idea. But if people actually saw me in the studio and saw how little I care about so many things…” He paused. “On the back of my albums you'll see a photo of a singing microphone pointing at a bass drum, supported by a wine stand. I just never cared for that. I wish it sounded better because I respect a lot of big pop producers.” He added: “You always worship someone you don’t feel you are.”
Parker prefers to work alone and in solitude; he often rents an Airbnb near the beach, bringing any studio equipment with him. For “Deadbeat”, he moved first to Montecito and then to Malibu. “I just go to the map, look at the shoreline and find the points that are closest to the water,” he said. “I don’t care, I just want to find a place where I can hear the loudest waves.” He usually stays in place for four or five days at a time. In 2020, he bought a property in Yallingup near Perth called Wave House. (Before Parker took ownership, he rented it and recorded there, recording parts of Innerspeaker, Tame Impala's debut, and Currents.) The house sits on a fifty-acre plot overlooking Injidup Beach and Leeuwin Naturaliste National Park. “It’s like the end of the earth,” Parker said. “It's a really beautiful place. In the nineties, there were raves there in this natural amphitheater. It was actually a big inspiration.”
Parker said “Deadbeat” was shaped in part by the spirit of bush doofs, all-night dance parties held in rural, off-the-grid locations. “They happen all over the world, but in Australia they have a name for them,” he told me. “Doof” started out as a derogatory word to describe club music because from a distance all you hear is deaf, deaf, deaf. I've always been very inspired by this scene. Part of my desire to make music like this is to be transported there – for me it's musical Nirvana. I got into psych rock for the same reason. This idea of endless, hypnotic music that a field full of people can tap into.”
I told Parker that I liked the album title, both because of its ridiculous, dirty connotations—absent father, lazy co-worker, shady guy—and because of its literal reference to bad rhythm, dead beat. “You get the duality,” Parker said, nodding. “For a moment, I was a little worried that maybe I'd come up with a word that was too sensitive for people. For me, it's a feeling. It's a way of taking something you're not sure about—a way of seeing yourself, something you don't like—and celebrating it. “Hey, guys, it's me. Fucking slacker.” In a way, I've always felt that way.” He continued: “Most of this album is inspired by my teenage years, when I was graduating from high school and trying to become an adult, and I was having a hard time. There was this assumption that I would go to university and become part of the workforce. For me, it just didn't make sense to work in an office and drink on Friday nights with other office workers and then, like, go on dates. That's why I ended up living in a shared house with a bunch of other stoned people, listening to music. to psych-rock.” He began to see his rejection of normie culture as a source of both pride and relief. “To put that word on the cover of my album, I can't describe the feeling, how comforting it is – is it catharsis? Is that the word? Catharsis?” – he asked, laughing.
All of Parker's recordings have a special quality, a swing, a rhythm that doesn't beat. “That’s the Deadbeat sound,” he said. “All the drum machines go through guitar amps. I wanted to make a simple, bad-sounding album.” Recently, Parker has also taken wabi-sabi ideal – glory is in irregularity, in something vaguely deformed. At Tame Impala's live shows, he encourages his bandmates (Parker tours with a crack line-up that includes Dominic Simper, Jay Watson, Cam Avery and Julien Barbagallo) to look into their mistakes. “I started telling the guys, ‘Not only don’t worry about it, don’t stop yourself,’” Parker said. “Even if we shit the bed and the whole song falls apart and we stop, for us it’s awkward, but for someone in the audience it’s just seeing people on stage.” He continued: “I make my own music, so I've always been obsessed with the idea of making something that sounds like a hundred people. But I think somewhere along the way I kind of forgot the intimacy of it – the value of vulnerability, the value of making it really obvious that you're human.”
