There were a lot of firsts to be experienced on Tame Impala’s Deadbeat tour. I have never seen an arena headliner emerge looking more like he’s just stumbled out of bed. I have never seen a lighting and laser rig so spectacular that it can evoke the ego-obliterating escapism only the best psychedelia can achieve. And I have definitely never watched a performer walk off stage for a wee – and I mean watched, along with thousands of others, as a camera followed him right up to the urinal.

Related: Tame Impala: Deadbeat review | Alexis Petridis’s album of the week

The question of whether Kevin Parker’s mid-show piss on the Deadbeat tour (he does it every show) is a cheeky joke, a manoeuvre to buy time for some production trickery, or a performance to build out his deliberately lackadaisical stage presence, is part of his appeal. Live, his voice is ethereal and plaintive, soaring even over the most abrasive guitars and synthy ruckus. And the whole band, with added sixth member James Ireland of Pond fame, sound incredible; drummer Julien Barbagallo can and will rattle your rib cage.

The Deadbeat tour started almost a year ago in the US, and has finally made its way home to Australia, with 12 arena dates across the country and ending in Perth, his home town. Parker seemed genuinely moved to be on home soil. “I promise I’m not going to go on about this all night,” he told the screaming crowd at the first show in Brisbane on Friday night, “but I just want you to know how special it is to me to play these shows and these songs back home finally.”

Tame Impala’s support act in Australia is Ninajirachi, whose frenetic glitchy EDM serves as the uppers to Kev’s recent downers. Deadbeat is a melancholic album in isolation, but live – when it is broken up by the band’s previous hazy prog-rock, chunky psychedelia and airy trance tracks – it is noticeable how uncomfortably the newer songs sit with the older work. It’s not just that the crowd know the older songs better – though they do sing along to the guitar solos on tracks like Elephant note-perfect, like a football chant.

This is not to say that the Deadbeat tracks don’t sound great live: Loser has a sinister bounce to it, the layers of My Old Ways build with tension, and Dracula, predictably, brings the house down. But the more muted songs, like Piece of Heaven, No Reply and Obsolete, fall a little flat. Post-wee, Parker ambled over to a smaller stage in the crowd and sat cross-legged on a rug to play Ethereal Connection. This interlude goes too long and goes nowhere; after a few minutes of indulging Parker lying on his back and singing to the ceiling, a huge portion of the crowd seemed to get the message and went hunting for the loos themselves.

Certain older tracks, such as Elephant and Let It Happen, take on a darker industrial tone this time around, a welcome twist, almost as if a touch of Ninajirachi is seeping into Parker’s efforts to make the show blend together. But it is a constant tonal ricochet: are we about to get a sad track played on the floor or bombastic, euphoric pop, complete with confetti cannons (deployed multiple times) and enough lasers to correct the sight of everyone in the arena? It is hard for even a very willing crowd to ride these shifts in mood.

The two-hour show ends not on their recent mega-hit Dracula (second-to-last), but the seven-minute acid house track End of Summer. It makes for a downbeat ending for the Deadbeat tour – but it is still a night filled with banger after undeniable banger, and astonishing, eye-popping spectacle that needs to be seen to be believed.

  • Tame Impala’s Australian tour continues in Brisbane until 11 October, Melbourne 14-17 October, Sydney 19-21 October, Perth 24-25 October