Recorded across Germany, Mexico and Parcels’ native Australia, the band’s upcoming third album, LOVED, plays like a soundtrack to eating mangoes in the sunshine — which is, as vocalist-guitarist Jules Crommelin says, exactly what the group did while making it.
It’s 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’s atmosphere, the act wanted to “come back to where we started, when we were just making music, having fun and not thinking about it,” Crommelin says.
Out Sept. 12 on Because Music, LOVED follows a spring/summer tour that included Coachella, Primavera Sound and Glastonbury (a performance Crommelin calls “one of the highlights of my life”). Following the album’s release, Parcels will head out for a 12-city North American trek of arenas and amphitheaters — the act’s biggest in the territory to date.
Crommelin shares the inspirations on LOVED, from John Lennon to that mangoes and sunshine vibe.
2010s-Era Katy Perry
A nostalgic thing for us is Katy Perry and her earlier Max Martin productions. Songs like “Teenage Dream” and “California Gurls” would often come on in the shuttle taking us to a gig, so it’s like our party music. There’s inspiration with the synths and the feeling. It was such a great era of music; there was a ridiculousness that’s less present now. We were trying to channel that ridiculousness on this album. Our last record [2021’s Day/Night] was very conceptual, very deep, very internal and very of the time during COVID. This time we’re like, “F–k it. Let’s just have fun.”
Tortoise
This 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 “transcendental jazz.” It was one of the most amazing concerts I’ve 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 definitely in the record, especially on the last track, where we channeled that energy of experimenting and improvising in the studio.
Plastic Ono Band
[Keyboardist-guitarist] Pat [Hetherington] and I got really into John Lennon’s early records with Phil Spector. It’s the Wall of Sound, but dry. Plastic Ono Band [from 1970] is basic; you just hear drums, bass, guitar, piano and vocals, so it’s the raw song that shines through in the recording. There’s 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.
Mazunte, Mexico
Pat, Noah [Hill, the band’s bassist] and I went there for a writing camp. It’s where we wrote the lyrics of “Leaveyourlove.” We surfed every day and were in paradise eating mangoes on the beach. It’s how we grew up in Byron Bay, and this was like trying to come back to that. If there’s a concept for this album, it’s trying to return to where we started — being in sunny places, being light and having fun.
This story appears in the Aug. 16, 2025, issue of Billboard.
