It’s not clear what Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker is doing, but he’s definitely doing something in a video he shared this afternoon, titled “Rushium.” The sometimes abstract clip, which is scored by Tame Impala’s “Posthumous Forgiveness,” is a minute long and depicts Parker as a pharmaceutical scientist. The end of the video displays a screen that reads, “Phase 1 Clinical Trials Begin 01/2021.”
So, it’s not clear what the video is meant to promote, but given that a lot of artists have been announcing their first post-pandemic tour dates lately, that at least feels like a possibility. The vial that Parker holds in the final shot of the video appears to read “S.R. Tour,” suggesting that Parker will be announcing tour dates in support of The Slow Rush.
Parker previously told Apple Music of “Posthumous Forgiveness,” “Wrestling with demons of the past. Something from a long time ago doesn’t add up. I was lied to! Maybe there’s a good explanation but I’ll never get to hear it, so it’s up to me to imagine what it might sound like…”
He also previously told Uproxx of The Slow Rush, “I think it would be a stretch, calling it rock music, but that’s really all I can say about it. At the end of the day, genres are genres because of the way they make people feel. Rock music is rock music because it makes people think of rock when they listen to it, not because it has guitars, drums, and bass. […] I wanted to try and use things from totally different worlds in the way that a hip-hop producer would. To be almost collage-y. Make a soundscape and build a song from there.”
Revisit our 2020 interview with Parker here.