The psychedelic polymath opens up on becoming a first-time dad, The Wiggles’ Hottest 100 win, and Tame Impala’s upcoming tour.
came just as the world was shut down by the first strain of COVID-19, lending a bizarre resonance to Parker’s esoteric grappling with loss, nostalgia and both the anxiety and excitement of passing time. Alongside the world’s introduction to concepts like quarantine and social distancing, songs like, with their apprehensive pleas for optimism, took on a context Parker still finds confounding.
The deluxe reissue shores up the album for Tame Impala completists, including scrapped B-sides and remixes from the likes of Four Tet and Blood Orange; a propulsive version of the Quincy Jones-meets-’90s house stomper, originally recorded for online radio station NTS as a rave journey for the psychedelic set that Parker jokes “highlights the depths you can go to when you’re working all alone”.
“You learn a lot about yourself,” Parker says of dad life. “It’s one of those things where you don’t know how it’s gonna change you till it does. “If I’m looking after her and I’m looking for something to entertain her, I’ll just go straight to the guitar or piano or whatever, and her face just lights up,” Parker says. “She loves dancing, but she gets that from her mum.”
“Like, they won’t be this distant entity to her, they’ll be somewhat woven into her family. So who knows what that will mean for her relationship with the Wiggles?” He pauses and laughs. “Sorry, these are the rabbit holes my mind falls into…” “In a way they’re the most difficult, like in the way that making a ship in a bottle is harder than making a ship. Because you have these constraints, you have to figure out how to work in this small space.”