Tame Impala gives an overwhelming festival show at Palau Sant Jordi

Surprisingly, Australian Kevin Parker turned Tame Impala into a headliner at many festivals. With expansive psychedelia and a talent for immersive melodies, he conquered prime-time slots and built a remarkable discography. To avoid getting stuck in the mire of comfort and repetition, Parker has been opening windows to other sounds, evident in the album Deadbeat (2025) which he is presenting on the tour that passed through Palau Sant Jordi yesterday, with tickets practically sold out. Incidentally, it was the first time he had given a concert in Barcelona outside of Primavera Sound, where he has performed five times. And as on previous visits to the city, he made a stop at the bar La Plata in the Gothic Quarter.

At the Montjuïc venue, over two hours and with an expansive and quite decent sound, the Tame Impala of 2026 were also those of 2015, and the audience celebrated it. There was the characteristic ethereal reverb in the voice, the rock psychedelia that sometimes rhymes with progressive rock and at other times seeks the shelter of techno, a relatively small semicircular stage, a magnificent light design (like those that shine more at Sónar de Noche than at Primavera Sound) and a leader with a relaxed charisma, who as soon as he smokes a cigarette indolently during an instrumental track sits down to sing closer to the front-row spectators.

The concert had memorable moments, because Tame Impala's past is quite splendid and with a well-defined personality. Thus, it made itself known by opening the night with Apocalypse dreams and The moment and inviting an immersive experience. But there were also weaker stretches, especially related to Deadbeat. Parker grafts techno textures and rhythms between songs from fourteen years ago like Elephant, which was received with enthusiasm when the riff of guitar crunched and the rhythm focused on the history of hard rock. However, given the body language, where Kevin Parker seems to enjoy himself more is in the more recent material, which is precisely the least connected with Tame Impala's past. For example, while singing Afterthought, which could sound early in a club in northern England in the nineties, he got off stage to walk around the semicircular pit. Immediately after, the enthusiasm shifted and it was the audience who celebrated with a cheer the announcement of Feels like we only go backwards, another track from Lonerism (2012), the album that marked Tame Impala's upward trajectory to become a massive festival band like Primavera Sound. As was to be expected, the intensity at Sant Jordi dropped with Dracula, a song from Deadbeat where the two souls of the 2026 Kevin Parker coexist. It was as if the echo of the newer songs reached a muted audience, among whom there were a good number of people with English as their mother tongue.

More examples of this dynamic. While the band stays to play No reply, Parker goes to the restroom, the camera follows him and the screens show that, indeed, he is urinating (it's a recurso he uses in the concerts of this tour). When he returns, he lies on a rug on a small stage in the center of the floor where he fiddles with buttons and keys. The image evokes wizards of electronic psychedelia, but what sounds, pieces by Deadbeat, is progressive techno without a hook. It was the moment many spectators took to go get a drink, or to evacuate it. Back on the main stage and with the guitar, he regains the attention of Sant Jordi with Let it happen, one of the glories of Currents (2015). First-rate ammunition to open the second part of the concert.

The euphoria with which the audience accompanied Let it happen was rewarded with the most successful block of the night: psychedelia of choruses, lo-lo-lo-los, rhythmic crescendos, confetti, and the luminous display of the best possible New Year's Eve, while pearls from Currents and even a rescue from Innerspeaker (2010) like Alter ego were played. The emotional Eventually, with a lot of micro-songs within the song, and New person, same old mistakes closed the concert before the encore, recalling why Tame Impala is such an effective band at festivals: due to the magnetism with which Kevin Parker's music is capable of attracting the audience's attention. Obviously, this effect was multiplied at the Palau Sant Jordi, where everyone had come exclusively to listen to Tame Impala. The final gift was three songs, My old ways, The less I know the better, and End of summer, and the feeling that in the balance of the night, the good things weighed much more than the regular ones.