Tame Impala @ Co-Op Live
Kevin Parker & co. give a career-spanning performance to a broad audience at the UK’s largest purpose-built music venue. 2G4 were in attendance.
Something interesting is happening in rock music. If you’ve been paying attention, I’d wager you’ve noticed it, in your own tastes maybe, or in those of the algorithms serving you your streams of new artists. Moreso than at any point in the past 30 years, intricacy is back. You might think of it as intellectuality, as consideration, as music itself. However you frame it, artists are bringing a depth of thought to their work we’ve been missing for a long, long time. Even more interesting than that: people are listening to it.
Two bands shine above all others in this regard, equally meteoric in their recent trajectories. First, from New York City, we have Geese, their grungey, neo-Strokesy aesthetic belying the meticulous constructions and arrangements of even their most accessible output. In September last year, they and their supporters swamped the Brooklyn streets around Banker’s Anchor, thousands in attendance, an event drummer Max Bassin even likened to the Beatles’ London rooftop performance 55 years prior. Up in Canada, Angine de Poitrine take our whetted appetites for polyrhythm even further, dominating algorithms from their Quebec home and around the world, wrapping us all into their polkadotted, microtonal universe. I have shared these bands with many, and each time received the same pattern of response. At first, uncertainty, even distaste. Then, intrigue. I don’t know what this is, but my brain seems to like it. Finally, acceptance. We are all microtonal now.
But where did this come from? The seeds have been germinating for years, and not without cost. In the dearth of popular intricacy since the ‘70s, only Radiohead can really claim to have continually watered the shoots and tended the crop, but they’ve never looked particularly happy about it. Mid-00s behemoths Arctic Monkeys broke free of their verse-chorus-verse-chorus shackles as they entered their second decade, but did so with huge detriment to their album sales. Bands like Foals, Vampire Weekend, and MGMT managed some breakout success with a dollop of polyrhythmic intent, but their true hits are a comfortable 4/4. More recently, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have been showing us that microtonality can groove, but have rarely broken a top-40 album chart outside their native Australia. So what brought the public on side?
Kaleidoscopic
It’s just one guy. Kevin Parker, the, well, everything of Tame Impala, is who I hold responsible. A self-described music obsessive, persistently in search of sonic perfection, his platinum-selling Lonerism and follow-up opus Currents reset rock music’s general direction in the mid ‘10s by being decidedly not rock in their musical and production sensibilities. Through deliberate effort, Tame Impala’s layered compositions draw listeners in — beats and melodies the hook — then keep them there, countermelodies, obscured synths, one-off phrases combining in a psychedelic sonic sea.
And it’s in this sea that the current giants of rock happily swim. The first song Geese played together was Mind Mischief. Arctic Monkeys covered It Feels Like We Only Go Backwards on Triple J at the cusp of their transitional era. Beyond rock, A$AP Rocky grabbed a platinum-selling single with a Tame Impala backing track, Justice secured a Grammy with Kevin on vocals, Dua Lipa reached number 1 with a Kevin-produced record. Even Rihanna went platinum with a barely-changed cover of New Person, Same Old Mistakes. For aficionados of any persuasion, this is music that matters.
The Co-Op Live arena in Manchester can squeeze in 23,500 music aficionados and, as the UK’s largest indoor arena, could in some ways be considered the British home of music that matters. In early May, Kevin Parker & co. (Tame Impala in the more general sense) arrived there to give a career-sweeping revue, their first in the country since 2022. This is the Deadbeat tour, in promotion of last year’s eagerly anticipated and critic-splitting 12-track romp, and amongst a phenomenally wide mix of age and gender I stood, beer in hand, awaiting my promised spiritual zenith.
I needn’t wait long. They opened with Apocalypse Dreams. Perhaps the most kaleidoscopic psychedelic rush of the kaleidoscopic-all-over Lonerism, a friend later reflected that it blew his ‘tits clean off’, and I can see where he’s coming from. From there, we moved stepwise through subsequent albums in the form of The Moment, Borderline, and Loser, hit after hit after hit ensnaring the already submissive crowd. And it’s not just the music; Tame Impala shows are a spectacle of the visual as much as the aural. Written down it might sound clichéd, even twee: sweeping spectroscopic lasers, pulsing blocks of colour, obscurities in smoke, confetti cannons at crescendo. Being there, it’s a heady, messy mix, and one with that trademark engrossing intent. Where other bands might see live tours as a promotional tool, for Tame Impala, it’s clear that the show is the work, not merely a vessel for it.
Older fans are rewarded warmly with List of People and Alter Ego. Newer ones receive Dracula and Afterthought. In a central section, Kevin works his way backstage, a touch of Spinal Tap, perhaps — Tame Impala has never been shy of a goof — before emerging mid-crowd atop the ‘B Stage’, a circular plinth made up like a cosy bedroom or living room. Here, he’s showing us his process — synths strewn across the floor, microphone in hand — and we’re treated to the products in Deadbeat’s dance-infused Ethereal Connection and Not My World. It’s these dancier, techno-tinged tracks that have proven most divisive, and it’s perhaps understandable why. Four-on-the-floor, untz-untz, pared back, this is a world away from 2015. But the Kevin Parker of recent years has made no secret of his ambitions. This is dance music. Dance music brings people together. Bringing people together has been the de facto Tame Impala at least as far back as Currents.
Twenty-two or twenty-three tracks, total, depending on how you slice it, and in the final encore, it all makes sense. We’ve seen a rock band, a solo artist, a rave-bound soundsystem, and all by the same artist, the same name, all delivering with the same impact. Even those most sceptical of this new ‘simpler’ direction must find themselves in awe as End of Summer reaches its climax, a fitting if unexpected partner to the undeniable The Less I Know the Better. Another confetti battery, lasers flickering at their maximum intensity, the crowd leap as one, arms aloft, smiles and eyes wide. And it is done.
The music of Tame Impala connects with people, and connects the people themselves as a result. It’s through deliberate effort. Kevin Parker is still striving for intricacy, still in pursuit of the same sonic goals, and still with the same approach: changing everything about his previous approach. Whether it’s the odd timings of Geese or the microtonality of Angine de Poitrine, as the ‘20s, progress, it seems more and more possible to combine intricacy with success. At Co-Op Live, Tame Impala achieved just that. ⚭
Dan JohnsonTame Impala were at Co-Op Live, Manchester M11, 8 May 2026
The Deadbeat global tour runs in the US and Australia through October
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