Tame Impala’s “My Old Ways” opens with Parker’s voice, distant, raw, like it was captured on a handheld device. Sparse piano notes shadow him.
The microphone bleeds into the room: crackling, fragile, exposed. It’s jarring if you know Parker’s work, this guy who’s spent two decades obsessing over sonic perfection.
He told interviewers he wanted to open with this “janky” take to force himself out of his comfort zone, and you can hear that discomfort. It sounds vulnerable in a way Tame Impala rarely does.
For sixty seconds, that’s all you get. Piano and confession. Parker singing about falling back into patterns he thought he’d escaped, and the production matches the sentiment.
Everything feels unstable, unfinished. Then the rhythm arrives, slick and full-bodied: a house beat cloaked in gloss.
Synth tides rise, bass pulses, and the refrain, “Back into my old ways again,” anchors itself. The transition is smooth, a rising wave of precision contrasting the raw start.
The 90s house influence makes sense thematically. There’s something about that era’s rave culture that fits with the song’s addiction narrative.
When taking drugs felt more communal, more about the party than numbing out alone. Parker plays with that nostalgia throughout, letting the beat carry the weight while his lyrics spiral.
The house production though. This is where things get messy. Resident Advisor didn’t hold back, calling out the rigid 4/4 structure and lack of detail.
They said it exposes Parker as someone still figuring out club music, that it sounds generic compared to actual house producers. And look, they’re not wrong.
The track runs over six minutes and barely deviates from its central groove. That repetition can feel hypnotic or just tedious depending on your tolerance for minimalism. I’ve listened to this maybe twenty times now and I still can’t decide if the repetition is the point or if it’s just… repetitive.
Parker’s refusal to make the subject matter palatable does save it though. There’s no redemption arc here, no moment where he claims he’s figured it out.
Just the cycle: rationalisation, surrender, shame. “Thought I would never go back, but just this once / A little present for holding out so long.”
That’s the bargaining stage, the lie you tell yourself. Parker knows these mental gymnastics intimately, and he doesn’t dress them up.
The bridge is where he stops holding back. Vocals stack on top of each other, “Always fucking up with something” repeating until it sounds less like singing and more like purging.
It’s raw in a way that feels almost punk, which is strange to say about a house track. Strange but accurate. There’s real frustration there, real self-loathing. The instrumental break that follows feels like falling, which is probably the point.
Parker recorded parts of this at Wave House in Perth, the same place he holed up fifteen years ago to write Innerspeaker.
That detail matters more than it should. Going back to where you started, physically returning to the scene. The whole song functions as that kind of return, both literal and metaphorical. Or maybe I’m reading too much into it. Maybe it was just available.
The Orchid synth thing is worth noting. Parker put time and money into developing what should be his ideal instrument, but this track doesn’t sound like it uses any of that technology.
Maybe the song predates his involvement, or maybe his hands still reach for the familiar gear when he’s actually creating. There’s something funny about that. Building a custom tool and then not using it for your comeback single.
Sam Kristofski’s video gets the duality right. Parker moving between isolated beach landscapes and crowded city streets, never quite belonging in either space.
The visual language matches what the song does, that tension between wanting to retreat and needing to engage.
Critics have called it an addict’s anthem, which kind of makes sense. But it works just as well as a song about any pattern you can’t break.
Relationships you keep falling into, jobs you keep quitting, cities you keep moving back to. The specificity of Parker’s lyrics gives it weight, but the themes are broad enough to project onto.
He debuted it live at an A24 session in New York with a full band. Reports say the live arrangement opens it up, adds dimension. I haven’t seen footage yet so I can’t speak to whether that addresses the repetitiveness.
Sometimes a song that feels thin on record expands in a room with other humans. Sometimes it just reveals the thinness more clearly.
The discourse around this track frustrates me. How it gets framed as Parker “selling out” or “chasing trends.”
As if the only authentic move would be to make Lonerism part three. He’s allowed to be interested in house music. The question isn’t whether he should be doing this, it’s whether he’s doing it well. And honestly?
It’s mixed. The emotional core is solid. Parker sounds more honest here than he has in years, willing to look pathetic and mean it.
But the production feels half-committed, like he couldn’t decide whether to make a proper club track or just borrow the aesthetic.
That phone-recorded intro is doing a lot of work. It signals that this album will be different, rougher, more willing to show the seams. And that’s admirable.
Music doesn’t need to be perfect to be move you. But there’s a difference between intentional rawness and just not fully developing an idea.
“My Old Ways” sits somewhere between those poles, never quite committing to either. Which might be the most honest thing about it, actually.
The track won’t satisfy purists of any stripe. House heads will find it too soft, too melodic, too interested in being a “song” rather than a tool for the floor.
Tame Impala fans wanting another psych-rock epic will bounce off the whole approach. What it offers instead is something messier and more human.
A guy in his late thirties admitting he’s still making the same mistakes, set to a beat that wants to be danceable but can’t quite shake the sadness underneath.
There’s value in that honesty even when the execution wavers. Parker’s best work has always lived in the gap between what he wants to be and what he actually is.
“My Old Ways” exists in that gap too. More interesting than good, more affecting than impressive. I keep coming back to it even when I’m not sure I like it.