See Tame Impala Go All-Acoustic for First Time for NPR Tiny Desk Set

Kevin Parker and six acoustic guitars showcase hits like “Borderline,” “New Person, Same Old Mistakes,” and new Deadbeat tracks

Tame Impala released their new album, Deadbeat, today, and to celebrate the arrival, Kevin Parker and company visited NPR’s Tiny Desk to deliver the band’s first-ever all-acoustic performance.

Armed with six acoustic guitars — one of which was used as the percussion — Tame Impala played four songs over 20 minutes, opening with The Slow Rush’s “Borderline” before performing two tracks off the just-released Deadbeat, “Loser” and “Dracula.” Tame Impala closed out the mini-set by revisiting Currents’ “New Person, Same Old Mistakes.”

The Tiny Desk concert marked Tame Impala’s second time on the NPR music show, although it was their first time actually visiting the venerable cubicle. Back in 2020, amid the Covid pandemic, Parker played a Tiny Desk At Home gig from his quarantine. The performance focused on tracks from Tame Impala’s then-new album The Slow Rush, which was the band’s most recent LP until Deadbeat’s release today.

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In addition to the Tiny Desk set, Tame Impala also released the latest visual off Deadbeat on Friday with a cinema verité-style visual for the album’s opening track “My Old Ways”:

A plugged-in Tame Impala will hit the road later this month on their six-city U.S. tour in support of Deadbeat, beginning Oct. 27 with a four-night stand at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center and concluding Nov. 17 with the third of three gigs at Los Angeles’ Kia Forum.