Watch Tame Impala’s Intimate ‘Tiny Desk Home’ Performance

Tame Impala staged an intimate “Home” installment of NPR’s Tiny Desk series, playing a trio of recent songs.

Kevin Parker, the Australian psych-pop act’s songwriter and sole studio contributor, fronts the performance at his home studio. Adjusting effects and EQs on a small mixer, he adds a heavier electronic presence to the material, with touring members Jay Watson and Dom Simper playing samplers and sequencers.

“This is Tame Impala Soundsystem,” Parker tells the camera, introducing this unique set-up. The scaled-back lineup play two songs from the recently issued The Slow Rush (“Is It True” and “Breathe Deeper”) along with the 2019 single “Patience.”

Parker detailed his “At Home” approach to NPR. “I’ll get Jay [Watson] and Dom [Simper] and we’ll do this kind of electronic jam with heaps of equipment around us and we’ll recreate the songs with samplers and sequencers,” he said. “I’ve wanted to do something like this for a while and thought Tiny Desk would be the opportunity to do it.”

The Tame Impala members have been busy in 2020. Watson released his latest GUM album, Out in the World, in June; Simper recently issued unfolding, his debut EP under the bambi moniker; and Parker released a remix of 070 Shake’s “Guilty Conscience,” collaborated on the Streets’ “Call My Phone Thinking I’m Doing Nothing Better” and joined Oneohtrix Point Never to co-write and produce an interlude on the Weeknd’s After Hours LP.