The Guardian’s review of Tame Impala’s Deadbeat tour in Brisbane suggests the production carried the night: a laser and lighting rig delivered psychedelic escapism, while melancholic newer songs sat awkwardly beside older material.
Key takeaways
- The Guardian’s review of Tame Impala at Brisbane Entertainment Centre praises the lighting and laser rig as able to produce the escapism associated with the best psychedelia.
- According to the same review, the band’s more melancholic recent songs sit uneasily next to the chunky psychedelia and hazy prog-rock it is known for.
- At arena scale, visual production can do much of the work that sound alone once did in creating a psychedelic experience.
- A single review covers one night from one critic’s point of view, so it cannot settle how the tour works across other dates or for other audiences.
Spectacle is doing the heavy lifting at arena scale
This article argues a fairly narrow point. Going by the Guardian’s account of the Deadbeat tour stop in Brisbane, the strongest part of the show was the visual production, not how the set was put together. The paper describes a lighting and laser rig impressive enough to bring on the ego-dissolving escapism that good psychedelic music aims for. It also reports that the newer, more melancholic songs did not sit comfortably beside the heavier, hazier psychedelic and progressive rock that made the band’s name.
Together, these two observations point to something common in arena music. Once a show moves into a large indoor venue, much of the experience is handed to light, lasers and screens. That production can hold the room together even when the songs pull in different emotional directions. It can carry a set past awkward transitions, but it does not remove them. A gap between the mood of new and old material stays there under the lasers.
The point is about form and staging, not about whether any particular song is good. It is also deliberately limited to what one published review reports. The full list of songs played, how long the show ran and how the audience reacted are not set out in the material available here, so they are treated as unknown.
The light show is described as the night’s defining achievement
The first piece of evidence is the weight the review gives to the production itself. The Guardian’s critic says they had never seen a lighting and laser rig so spectacular that it could evoke the kind of escapism only the best psychedelia achieves. That is a strong claim. It credits the visuals with the core effect psychedelic music is usually meant to have.
This matters because psychedelic rock has long relied on visuals. Liquid light projections, oil slides and strobes were part of the genre’s live identity in clubs and small halls well before arenas became the usual venue for successful acts. What has changed is scale. In a small room, sound and closeness can carry the mood. In an arena, the nearest performer may be far away for most of the crowd, and the visual system has to reach every seat.
On that reading, the Guardian’s praise for the rig is more than a passing compliment. It suggests the production was the main way the show delivered its psychedelic promise to thousands of people at once. When a critic singles out the lasers as one of the evening’s “firsts”, it shows where the experience of the night was concentrated.
Newer material is reported to clash with the established sound
The second piece of evidence is the review’s description of how the set hung together. The Guardian reports that melancholic recent tracks sat uncomfortably alongside the chunky psychedelia and hazy prog-rock the band is known for. The headline describes the show as moving back and forth between musical uppers and downers.
This is a familiar problem for any act whose newer recordings move away from its earlier sound. A touring set has to serve two audiences at once: people who came for the familiar songs and people interested in the new direction. When the emotional registers differ sharply, sequencing becomes difficult. A run of reflective, low-key songs can cut into momentum built by heavier, more immersive pieces. A sudden return to the older sound can then make the newer songs feel like an interruption, not a development.
The review’s wording suggests the Brisbane show did not fully solve this. “Ricochets” implies abrupt movement, not a gradual arc. It is worth being clear about what is not known. The excerpt does not say which specific songs were involved, in what order they came, or whether the reviewer thought the clash weakened the evening overall or simply gave it texture. Those details would be needed for a firmer judgement.
The screens turned informality into part of the show
The third piece of evidence concerns how the arena format handles intimacy and informality. The Guardian notes that the headliner came on stage looking unusually dishevelled. More strikingly, it describes a mid-show break in which the performer left the stage for the toilet while a camera followed him all the way to the urinal, in view of the whole audience. The review treats this as unprecedented in the critic’s experience. The excerpt cuts off just as it begins to weigh what that moment meant, so the critic’s final verdict on it is not known.
Whatever the verdict, the episode shows how fully the visual system mediates an arena show. Something that would normally happen offstage and unseen became, through the camera and screens, part of the performance. It shows the production’s power working in another direction. The same infrastructure that creates immersive psychedelic escapism can also stage casual, unguarded moments, and both become material for the audience.
This supports the main argument. In the arena setting described, production does more than decorate the songs. It shapes what the audience sees, how the evening is paced and what counts as part of the show. Where it is working at that level, it is reasonable to say that it carries the night.
The strongest case against: contrast may be the point
The fairest objection is that the tension the review describes may be deliberate, and may be a strength. A set that swings between euphoria and melancholy can be read as an emotional arc, not a failure of sequencing. Many celebrated live shows depend on contrast, using quieter, sadder passages so that the louder, more immersive moments hit harder. On that view, the “uppers and downers” are the design, and discomfort in a reviewer may mean the show succeeded in unsettling its audience.
The same objection can be made about the production. Describing the lights as the night’s defining achievement could undersell the music, because a light show only evokes escapism when it is synchronised with sound that supports it. The lasers and the songs may be inseparable parts of one experience, and crediting one at the expense of the other could be a false division.
There is also a basic limit on the evidence. One review reflects one critic, one night and one city. Other audience members may have experienced the newer songs as the emotional centre of the show, not a drag on it. Fans who have followed the band’s recent direction may hear continuity where a critic hears clashes. Nothing in the available material reports audience response, and without it the claim that the setlist “falters” rests on a single perspective.
These are serious objections. The conclusion here is best held as a reading of the Guardian’s account, not a verdict on the tour.
Evidence that would change the conclusion
Several kinds of evidence could strengthen, weaken or overturn this argument.
First, reviews of other dates on the Deadbeat tour would show whether the tonal mismatch the Guardian describes is consistent or particular to the Brisbane show. If other critics describe the same set as a coherent arc, the case that the setlist falters becomes much weaker.
Second, a full setlist with song order would allow a closer look at sequencing. If the newer, melancholic songs were grouped together or placed at deliberate turning points, that would support the view that the contrast was intended. If they were scattered in ways that repeatedly broke momentum, that would support the critic’s sense of discomfort.
Third, evidence of audience response, such as reported crowd reactions or wider fan discussion of the tour, would test whether the clash was felt widely or mainly by the reviewer. The available material contains none of this, so it is not known.
Fourth, the complete text of the review would clarify how the critic finally weighed the production against the music, and what they made of the mid-show break. The excerpt used here stops before that judgement is given.
If these sources together showed that audiences experienced the show as unified and the newer material as central, the argument that production papered over a weaker setlist would have to be revised. It would become an account of a show where the visuals and the shifts in mood worked together as intended.
Sources and further reading
- The Guardian, music section: live review of Tame Impala’s Deadbeat tour at Brisbane Entertainment Centre, the main source for this article.
- Music criticism archives from major newspapers: for comparison with other reviews of arena-scale psychedelic and rock productions.
- Histories of psychedelic rock performance: background on the genre’s long relationship with light shows and visual projection.
- Trade coverage of live event production: context on how lighting, laser and screen systems are used in large indoor venues.
Surfaced from the rss:guardian_music signal “arena psychedelic concert review”. AI-assisted draft, editorially reviewed.
