\n\tRecorded across Germany, Mexico and Parcels\u2019 native Australia, the band\u2019s upcoming third album, LOVED, plays like a soundtrack to eating mangoes in the sunshine \u2014 which is, as vocalist-guitarist Jules Crommelin says, exactly what the group did while making it. <\/p>\n
\n\tIt\u2019s a lifestyle the five-man band knows well, having grown up together in the surf town of Byron Bay. After moving to Berlin in 2015 and making indie pop that reflected the darkness and cool of the city\u2019s atmosphere, the act wanted to \u201ccome back to where we started, when we were just making music, having fun and not thinking about it,\u201d Crommelin says. <\/p>\n
\n\tOut Sept. 12 on Because Music, LOVED follows a spring\/summer tour that included Coachella, Primavera Sound and Glastonbury (a performance Crommelin calls \u201cone of the highlights of my life\u201d). Following the album\u2019s release, Parcels will head out for a 12-city North American trek of arenas and amphitheaters \u2014 the act\u2019s biggest in the territory to date. <\/p>\n
\n\tCrommelin shares the inspirations on LOVED, from John Lennon to that mangoes and sunshine vibe.<\/p>\n
\t\t2010s-Era Katy Perry\t<\/p>\n
\n\tA nostalgic thing for us is Katy Perry and her earlier Max Martin productions. Songs like \u201cTeenage Dream\u201d and \u201cCalifornia Gurls\u201d would often come on in the shuttle taking us to a gig, so it\u2019s like our party music. There\u2019s inspiration with the synths and the feeling. It was such a great era of music; there was a ridiculousness that\u2019s less present now. We were trying to channel that ridiculousness on this album. Our last record [2021\u2019s Day\/Night] was very conceptual, very deep, very internal and very of the time during COVID. This time we\u2019re like, \u201cF\u2013k it. Let\u2019s just have fun.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\tTortoise\t<\/p>\n
\n\tThis band is an inspiration that goes deep for me on this record. I saw them in a really small venue in Los Angeles, and I was just so transcended by it. I call it \u201ctranscendental jazz.\u201d It was one of the most amazing concerts I\u2019ve ever seen. It also sparked an old memory because I grew up listening to Tortoise on the soundtrack to this old surf movie Sprout, which I watched basically every day. [The energy of] Tortoise is \u00addefinitely in the record, especially on the last track, where we channeled that energy of experimenting and improvising in the studio.<\/p>\n
\t\tPlastic Ono Band\t<\/p>\n
\n\t[Keyboardist-guitarist] Pat [Hetherington] and I got really into John Lennon\u2019s early records with Phil Spector. It\u2019s the Wall of Sound, but dry. Plastic Ono Band [from 1970] is basic; you just hear drums, bass, guitar, piano and vocals, so it\u2019s the raw song that shines through in the recording. There\u2019s an element of that in how we approached our arrangement, because it was just the five of us in a room playing live, and that was it.<\/p>\n
\t\tMazunte, Mexico\t<\/p>\n
\n\tPat, Noah [Hill, the band\u2019s bassist] and I went there for a writing camp. It\u2019s where we wrote the lyrics of \u201cLeaveyourlove.\u201d We surfed every day and were in paradise eating mangoes on the beach. It\u2019s how we grew up in Byron Bay, and this was like trying to come back to that. If there\u2019s a concept for this album, it\u2019s trying to return to where we started \u2014 being in sunny places, being light and having fun.<\/p>\n
\n\tThis story appears in the Aug. 16, 2025, issue of Billboard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Recorded across Germany, Mexico and Parcels\u2019 native Australia, the band\u2019s upcoming third album, LOVED, plays like a soundtrack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4189,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[264],"tags":[18,117,360,1881,1883,19,17,361,337],"class_list":{"0":"post-4188","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-eire","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-fall-music-preview","11":"tag-genre-dance","12":"tag-genre-pop","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-magazine","16":"tag-music"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}