Live Review: Tame Impala Brings the Deadbeat Tour Home to Perth
By Sheldon Ang
Photography by Sheldon Ang Photography
Tame Impala – Deadbeat Tour – 25 October 2026 – at RAC Arena Perth Western Australia
Impala (noun): a medium-sized African antelope (Aepyceros melampus) with a reddish-brown coat, white underparts, and slender, ringed, lyre-shaped horns found exclusively on males.
Tame (as an adjective): unafraid of humans and accustomed to living with them; the opposite of wild.
As a verb, tame meant to train or condition an animal, bird, or other creature to be unafraid of and manageable by humans.
Perhaps that contradiction was the point. “Tame” suggested control, while “impala” evoked something wild. Kevin Parker’s music, released under the name Tame Impala, had always occupied the space between those ideas, balancing meticulous studio craftsmanship with the freedom and unpredictability of psychedelia and dance. That contrast defined the Fremantle musician’s sound: dreamy, strange and unpredictable, yet crafted with an obsession for precision. Live, those carefully assembled details felt viscerally magical, connecting with an audience far beyond his home in the world’s most isolated city, Perth, Western Australia.
For two hours, we felt as though we were in a lucid dream. Parker and his five musicians, mainly on synthesisers, guitar, bass, and percussion, wove sight, sound and time into a kaleidoscopic journey, drawing us through his psychedelic soundscape with a dance-driven twist and a dose of EDM.
It was easy to hear why this local artist, whom we Perth’ians proudly claimed as our own, had moved from Perth’s bedrooms and suburban rehearsal spaces to arenas around the world. Performances at venues such as New York’s Madison Square Garden had cemented his place as a global phenomenon and one of Australia’s biggest solo exports. That night, however, the journey brought him home.
Here’s how the first night at Perth’s RAC Arena unfolded.
At 8.45 pm, ocean sounds and bass rolled through the arena as Parker’s crew made their way through the crowd. The circular stage stood high above the floor. Parker stood at its centre, taking in the screams of a capacity crowd of 15,000 fans. Unlike some of his European shows, where the stage had stood in the middle of the venue, this one occupied the usual end of RAC Arena.
He looked Fremantle quintessentially. Dressed in a white T-shirt beneath a grandad cardigan, with vintage striped trousers, Parker looked more like a bedroom songwriter from the port city than a two-time Grammy Award winner. A spotlight settled on him, offering what was probably our first and last clear opportunity to photograph him under a key light.
“Check check one two.”
With that brief pretend soundcheck complete, the opening notes rang out. Beneath the dark hues, Parker’s calming psychedelic vocals carried across the arena, rising into falsetto as the futuristic synth keys of Apocalypse Dreams rippled through the room. We had been here for Hans Zimmer Live a fortnight earlier, and for a moment, that same visceral musical connection returned. Lights and lasers swept across the arena, performing a cinematic sweep within its psychedelic spell. Layer upon layer of textured sound seemed to carry us beyond the confines of the venue.
The stage design deepened that sense of escape. It looked like a scene from one of Stanley Kubrick’s seminal film, with an overhead lighting rig that moved as though it were breathing and feeding on the energy in the arena. Its dancing beams drew the audience into a hypnotic trance. At times, the lights seemed to follow the music; at others, they appeared to drive it, becoming a second rhythm section. The whole set felt alive.
That ethereal mood carried into Borderline, with Parker’s falsetto washing over us as lasers cut through the darkness. The overhead rig then lowered, making it seem as though he were performing inside a space pod, far from Earth. Wherever our minds had wandered, the music seemed to take us somewhere safer. By then, the grandad cardigan had come off.
There was already so much to take in when the guitar cut through on Loser. Its familiar sound rolled through the room in waves of fuzz and colour, the kaleidoscopic tone bending and warping in classic Tame Impala fashion.
Yet Tame Impala rode on more than one vibe. The mood shifted from drifting through a dream to locking into a groove as Parker launched into Elephant. It delivered a modern take on a 1960s Beatles vibe, with raw energy, fuzz guitar and a stomping rhythm section that turned the arena into a dance floor. From the elevated stage, that sound reached every corner of the room.
Through every change of mood, the crowd, made up mainly of Gen Z fans, sang along to every word.
Then came an obligatory part of Parker’s performances: the toilet break. He walked through the backstage area of RAC Arena and opened a cubicle door to find Andy Brayshaw of the Fremantle Dockers, dressed in the team’s jersey. The arena encounter drew the loudest screams of the night.
Parker then headed to Stage B for the EDM portion of the set. The setup was intended to resemble the space where he created his music, bringing a little of that private world into the arena. At times, he lay on his back as tracks such as Ethereal Connection played around him. The bedroom songwriter had not disappeared beneath the production. He had somehow made RAC Arena feel like an extension of his room, with 15,000 people invited over.
Back on the main stage, Let It Happen delivered one of the night’s ultimate spectacle. The screen lowered as the synths sounded, setting off lights that darted across the venue. A hypnotic groove gradually built into a sprawling psychedelic journey, constantly shifting and evolving. Layers of synthesisers, pulsating rhythms and kaleidoscopic visuals filled the arena before the set moved into Nangs, followed by the first performance of Post Forgiveness. Confetti was shot for the second time.
As the main set approached its close, bright lighting and heavy percussion made the dreamlike atmosphere feel even more enveloping. Lights swept across the room during a seven-minute sonic in Eventually, a showcase that seemed to take us to the dark side of the moon. For a moment, it felt as though we had stepped into a Pink Floyd arena show, while Tame Impala’s sound carried us somewhere we could not quite define.
New Person, Same Old Mistakes then took us on one more journey through the clouds, its ethereal mood carrying the main set towards the encore.
The encore opened with a bite from Dracula, shifting the mood firmly back towards the dance floor. For the younger fans, the track had gained popularity on social media through Jennie of Blackpink. It emerged from the darkness with a hypnotic pulse, blending Parker’s infectious psychedelia with a dance groove. There was no mistaking it for anything other than a dance track. It signalled a new era and a new vision for the Deadbeat album, before The Less I Know the Better had the crowd on their feet once again. End of Summer brought the night to a close. Three bangers including a Grammy Award winning track closing the ending.
Perth welcomed Parker as one of its own, but the night offered more than hometown pride. From the guitar fuzz to the electronic pulse of Deadbeat, he gave us a homecoming that looked back without standing still.
And that was night one. Tonight, Tame Impala returns for another journey to cap off the tour. Tickets are available from Frontier Touring.
Sheldon Ang Media would like to thank Frontier Touring and Tame Impala for the photo and review accreditation.
About Sheldon Ang Media: Sheldon Ang, photojournalist, writer and the founder of Perth-based Sheldon Ang Media (est. May 2022) has been accredited to over 250 of the hottest acts including Taylor Swift (ERAS Tour in Sydney), Coldplay (Perth), AC/DC, KISS, Metallica, Iron Maiden, RHCP and P!NK with reviews shared by the likes of Belinda Carlisle, UB40, Delta Goodrem, and Roxette. He has interviewed the late Ace Frehley (KISS), Suzi Quatro, John Steel (The Animals), Frank Ferrer (Guns N Roses), Phil X (Bon Jovi), Andrew Farris (INXS) plus over 100 artists. He’s also a contributor on Triple M Radio as a music journalist.
Tame Impala: Deadbeat Tour 2026, Perth
RAC Arena, Perth | 24 October 2026
Song / Album (album release year)
MAIN STAGE
• Apocalypse Dreams / Lonerism (2012)
• Deadbeat Jam / Live jam, no studio album
• Borderline / The Slow Rush (2020)
• Loser / Deadbeat (2025)
• Breathe Deeper / The Slow Rush (2020)
• Gossip / Currents (2015)
• Elephant / Lonerism (2012)
• Afterthought / Deadbeat (2025)
• My Old Ways / Deadbeat (2025)
• Feels Like We Only Go Backwards / Lonerism (2012)
B STAGE
• No Reply (Reprise) / Deadbeat (2025)
• Ethereal Connection / Deadbeat (2025)
• Not My World / Deadbeat (2025)
MAIN STAGE
• Let It Happen / Currents (2015)
• Nangs / Currents (2015)
• Posthumous Forgiveness / The Slow Rush (2020)
• Alter Ego / Innerspeaker (2010)
• Eventually / Currents (2015)
• New Person, Same Old Mistakes / Currents (2015)
ENCORE
• Dracula / Deadbeat (2025)
• The Less I Know the Better / Currents (2015)
• End of Summer / Deadbeat (2025)
