Tame Impala Is Embracing the Spotlight, Awkwardly

“There’s a party in my head, and no one is invited,” the Australian musician Kevin Parker, who records as Tame Impala, sang on “Solitude Is Bliss,” an immersive psych-rock tune off his 2010 debut, “InnerSpeaker.”

Those lyrics were something of a mission statement for Tame Impala, which seems like a band, but is actually the solo project of one sonically imaginative introvert. They also established the core tension that has come to define Tame Impala over the past decade: As Parker’s popularity has grown — hit albums like “Currents” (2015) and “The Slow Rush” (2020) have turned him into a festival headliner and a collaborator for A-list pop stars like Rihanna, Dua Lipa and Lady Gaga — the invite list to that private party has grown considerably.

That was evident on Tuesday night at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where Parker was in the middle of a sold-out, four-show run that found him helming a six-man band and playing to audiences of about 15,000. The tour is in support of Tame Impala’s fifth album, “Deadbeat,” released earlier this month, on which Parker flirts with the ego-obliterating escapism of dance music (song titles include “Oblivion,” “Piece of Heaven” and “Ethereal Connection”) but ultimately retreats into the familiar comfort of dour self-loathing (song titles also include “Obsolete,” “Loser” and “My Old Ways”).

At least by commercial measures, Tame Impala has never been bigger — and Parker has never sounded more miserable. On the disco-haunted single “Dracula” (Tame Impala’s first Hot 100 hit), social anxiety makes him feel like a monster. The murky, downcast “No Reply” plays out like an apology to the friends Parker has neglected in favor of solitary binge-watches: “Try to see my side: You’re a cinephile, I watch ‘Family Guy’ on a Friday night.” Even the album’s most syrupy love song, the Enya-indebted “Piece of Heaven,” features a gloomy coda in which Parker chides himself, “It won’t make a difference, you can lie all your life.”

To some Tame Impala fans, that rumpled self-deprecation is part of the appeal. Parker certainly provides an antidote to the overly confident, posturing machismo expected of a typical rock frontman or an EDM D.J., and there is something refreshing about the suggestion that success and suavity do not always have to go hand in hand.