(Esquire) "The New Testament of Tame Impala"

Let's start with an indisputable fact: Kevin Parker is not Jesus. He is, admittedly, on earth to spread a kind of salvation. And he has that hair and those warm eyes and the little beard, which combine to make him look like he should be sat at the centre of Leonardo's Last Supper. But no, Kevin Parker is almost certainly not Jesus.

Granted, in the flesh, you might wonder. He has this energy, or perhaps, a lack of energy, that bequiets a room. It's a kind of stillness, a preternatural calm that seems to soothe the people around him. That might actually just be because he's a softly spoken Australian who's partial to a joint and who's written some of his best songs stoned out of his tree. For Parker, getting high is a way to escape the twanging of his brain, which can get in the way of his creativity. Hence, the mellow vibe.

But even at larger scales, you can sense his aura. He can lean out from the edge of a stage and make tens of thousands of people feel like he's singing just to them. Oh, and he does write songs like 'Posthumous Forgiveness', the centrepiece of his upcoming fourth album, The Slow Rush, in which he laments the failings of an absent father before offering him exoneration (although unlike the Biblical Son, Parker's comes backed with pillowy synths). And he does occasionally withdraw from the world for extended periods of painful self-examination, after which he drafts a group of acolytes to spread his message. But, look, he's not Jesus, OK?

Although if he was, it would explain all the Kevin Parker-as-Christ art his fans make, and why they self-identify as 'Disciples', and why they caption selfies taken with him as their "lord and saviour". It would also make sense of their fervour, which seems religious in its intensity, as though they're experiencing his music as something more than music, something transcendental. Hence why, though I'm fairly confident that he's not actually the Messiah, it's hard to be sure. Then again, nothing about Kevin Parker, or his alter ego Tame Impala, is exactly certain.