Parcels’ third album is a warm, live-wire reminder of what brought them together in the first place. Over a decade has passed since Parcels left Byron Bay for Berlin. Since then, they’ve toured the world, collaborated with the likes of Daft Punk, and dropped albums that stretched their creative limits.
LOVED lands like a sunlit homecoming. It wraps itself around you like sunlight through a window, warm and unguarded. It’s the sound of five people letting go of pressure to make something real. A return to joy and to each other. A long exhale in musical form.
Interview by Katlyn Jennings
LOVED began in fragments, demos passed around, some recorded solo. “We’d all kind of gone off and then came back together,” Anatole Serrat recalls. “It wasn’t a full album yet. But then these raw, unproduced demos started to surface. Just guitar and voice. And I felt a kind of return to myself, this feeling of coming home…”
Compared to their concept-heavy double LP Day/Night, LOVED was a looser, lighter process. Some songs came together quickly. Others showed up late in the process. Parcels let instinct lead, ditching the need to polish every corner. “You start to lose something when you’re judging every take,” Jules Crommelin shares. “We tried to stay in the moment and move on before overthinking it. Is this a good take? Is that better? If it grooves, it works.”
This shift in approach became a guiding principle. “Before, we had such a vigorous culling of the music,” he reflects. “That was the big lesson: just enjoy the process.” This sentiment threads through the whole record. You hear it in the warmth of the harmonies, and in the grooves that feel like they’re unfolding in real-time.
Most of the record was made in Sydney, in a sun-drenched studio with high ceilings and a soft glow that seeped into the sound. “There was so much natural light,” Jules recalls. “It was this big open room. When I hear the record now, I hear that room.”
That physical space shaped the music’s emotional tone: open, soft around the edges, and free in its form. Each song became its own world. “It was really fun to go deep on just one song, then leave it behind the next day,” they explain. “It didn’t have to match what we were doing yesterday.”
LOVED isn’t trying to be defined. It’s exploratory. On “Leaves,” they recorded straight to analogue tape. On “Tobeloved,” the whole band sang around one mic. “We’re constantly trying to break the boundaries of what we’re defined as,” Jules tells us.
Despite the shifting sounds, what anchors Parcels today is each other. “When we’re on tour, we’re in such crazy situations. I look at the four other guys like, What is going on? This is crazy. I feel grounded being with them. That’s the bedrock keeping it all together.”
That connection, and staying close to the creative spark, is what drives them now. “At the start, it was simple: play big shows… Now it’s about staying inspired. What excites us, and how can we tap into that day-to-day? If we’re loving what we’re doing, that’s success.”
It’s a sentiment that lingers long after the album ends. LOVED is a reminder that we don’t need to chase the feeling. It’s already there, waiting for us when we’re ready to return.
Maybe that’s the real centre of LOVED. That feeling of re-alignment, of what’s worth returning to when the noise fades, the pace slows, and the magic comes back into focus.
And trusting yourself enough to let it be.
Listen Here parcels.lnk.to/LOVED
Follow Parcels @parcelsmusic
Interview with Jules Crommelin & Anatole Serret
Interview by Katlyn Jennings @katlynjennings_
Live Photos by Vincent Moreau @vincentmoreau_
Press Photo by Andrew Wheeler @d_wheeler_
