Tame Impala Built Himself A Spaceship

It looked like a spaceship whirring to life. For Tame Impala’s current arena tour, the crew constructs a circular stage in the middle of the floor. Kevin Parker’s bandmates remain posted up there throughout the show — sometimes visible, sometimes shrouded by video screens — while Parker spends the night making his way around the exterior of the circle. Sometimes he grabs a guitar and posts up at a microphone stand. Sometimes he slinks around with a mic, still not exuding pop-star charisma but looking more comfortable in the role. Occasionally he wanders away from the stage, including a mid-show interlude where the camera follows him into the bathroom for a pee break.The production is impressive. All these years later, I’m still not sure how to feel about Parker’s slow evolution from generational psych-rock auteur into electronic dance music dabbler and pop hit-maker. But the show he’s putting on right now helps his various eras to hang together as a unified whole, and it serves as a reminder of how many excellent tunes he’s racked up through the years. Tuesday night at a jam-packed Nationwide Arena in Columbus, he kicked off the next leg of this outing with a spectacle that papered...