If Christmas sales can happen before Halloween, spooky season can happen after November…
[Video]
[5.09]
Taylor Alatorre: Kevin Parker is no longer making an earnest effort to convince you that he’s nervous and awkward and lonely and sad, which frees him to put under the Tame Impala name the kind of guilt-free gimmickry that would normally be reserved for his high-profile clients. Still, a nod has to be made to the project’s original premise, like how General Hospital still has to show a character wearing scrubs at least a couple times a season. At the intersection of these two currents lies “Dracula,” a possible stowaway from a Dua Lipa writing session that gets a lot of mileage out of Parker’s near-monastic devotion to melody over coolness. The Pablo Escobar line is simultaneous self-sabotage and self-branding — the Millennial Rock Star archetype, fully retrofitted for the festival experience.
[7]
Tim de Reuse: I don’t really like Tame Impala’s last, uh, (checks calendar) 10 or so years of work. But “Dracula” doesn’t sound like their usual overcompressed, cough-syrup-flavored psychedelica; it sounds like a blippy, low-effort French house remix of a Tame Impala B-side that someone slapped together in an afternoon. It’s inconsequential and marshmallowy, but that’s not entirely a bad thing; it kind of dovetails well with the deep unseriousness of a delivery like “Daylight makes me feel like Draculaaaaaaa.”
[6]
Jel Bugle: The way he pronounces “Dracula” is quite annoying — it’s kind of a modern “Somebody’s Watching Me,” except the watcher had given up in a fit of boredom.
[3]
Katherine St. Asaph: Dracula: Mid and Loving It
[5]
Ian Mathers: Everything I have ever heard from this dude has been against my will via TSJ, and it has never felt worth the time I’ve spent listening. “I would not be actively annoyed if this was playing in the mall while I was picking something up” is not exactly high praise.
[4]
Alfred Soto: Kevin Parker treating himself as if we could recognize him on a first-name level is this single’s most charming element. The bubbly synth bass helps. This is Kevin talking, and he’s here to tell you what he found to be true.
[5]
Andrew Karpan: A postmodern approximation of the Max Martin sound that ends up unintentionally evoking the chorus of that uber-annoying Sam Smith record I hoped to never hear again, it is perhaps the most objectively unpleasant song Parker has ever recorded, give or take an appearance on the soundtrack for “Minions: The Rise of Gru.” Nevertheless, one cannot help but feel like he is evoking something of this current moment. Bloodsucking, I guess?
[4]
Jackie Powell: When “Dracula” starts, those “oh-oh-oh-oh”s remind me of the spookiness that Sam Smith and Kim Petras nailed in their 2023 Halloween banger “Unholy.” But unlike “Unholy,” Kevin Parker doesn’t throw the kitchen sink at his listener — at least not initially. As in many of his other songs, Parker serves as a conductor for his listener. He has an innate precision when it comes to determining when each beat needs to drop or when a new sound needs to be introduced; I often imagine him cueing in the sounds like a much calmer Australian version of Arturo Toscanini. When performing the song, he has a certain fun and flamboyance, especially in the verses when he rhymes and creates assonances from the phonetic sound “ah”: “bizarre,” “car,” “Dracula,” “star,” “Escobar.” The result is a slice-of-life banger about that night out that you don’t want to end that doesn’t take itself too seriously — something desperately needed as we near the end of 2025.
[8]
Leah Isobel: I’ll give Kevin that he is a good producer and arranger, at least within his limited aesthetic purview: the little instrumental hooks and countermelodies, the way the bass rolls up the scale, all the thunky chunky expensive-sounding sounds, it all locks together like a gears in the Playlist Fodder Factory. But this guy, this wan wispy unsexy motherfucker, really called himself “Mr. Charisma.” Mr. Charisma!
[3]
Nortey Dowuona: Sarah Aarons was chugging this down hard to let any of these nothingburger lyrics get past her. The drums suck too, but after this, we should’ve seen that coming.
[5]
Julian Axelrod: Look, I’ll take any new Halloween standard I can get, especially one you’d actually dance to at a party. But something about a father of two on the verge of 40 bragging about his epic nights out and comparing himself to Dracula and Pablo Escobar reeks of midlife crisis. Just dress up as a vampire and go trick or treating with your kids like every other dad!
[6]