Berlin has a habit of turning temporary flings with the city into indefinite chapters of one’s life. This is what happened to indie pop band Parcels. Ten years after the five-piece landed here as fresh-faced 18-year-olds from the coastal town of Byron Bay, Australia, the city still has three of them in its grasp – though the grip feels different now. Back then, Anatole Serret, Jules Crommelin, Louie Swain, Noah Hill and Patrick Hetherington were high school mates sharing a one-room flat on Finowstraße in Friedrichshain – three in the bed, two on the couch, they recall. “As an 18-year-old kid, Berlin was such a hustling, bustling, metropolitan, larger-than-life city,” drummer Anatole Serret tells me. “I still love Berlin, but the way that I move through the city has maybe changed.”
I’m allergic to that ‘too cool for school’ vibe. We felt together this summer. It was really fun, actually.
Today, Parcels has amassed a considerable following, with over a billion streams on Spotify, 420K Instagram followers, and a collaboration with Daft Punk. But back in 2015, the quintet was far less well-known – which is to say, not at all. “We used to just call around and beg our mates for a place to rehearse. Now it’s… well, a lot nicer,” says Serret. He remembers sharing neon-lit practice spaces with heavy metal bands. “They were always complaining about us leaving rubbish … We thought they’d be the messy ones.” Now they’re rehearsing in places like Damon Albarn’s London studio, complete with coffee service.
The band’s dynamics changed in 2023, when Crommelin and Hill packed their bags and returned to Australia. “Berlin’s not for everybody,” Serret admits. “The guys who moved back were pretty unhappy here towards the end, so they were stoked they could live where they wanted to.” The geographical gap means their time together is precious and intense. “Now, every time we get together, we’ve only got a few weeks to record, rehearse and shoot videos.”
This pressure cooker has shaped their new album, LOVED, out September 12. Written in fragments from separate cities and separate studios across Berlin, Mexico and Australia, the songs were all stitched together in Sydney last November. “It feels like a greatest-hits album of the year,” Serret says. “Each song stands alone, giving it power, rather than forcing them into one mood or concept. We gave each track what it needed, and then stopped there.” It’s a sharp contrast to their second record, 2021’s Day/Night, when they shut themselves in a studio for two months and worked, literally day and night, to a single conceptual arc. “When you have the headspace for it, that’s amazing,” Serret says, “But this record is different. I think it’s a way I would like to work again.” In May, the band told Rolling Stone Australia that LOVED is “a personal, yet celebratory journey”, adding that, “it’s very internal for all of us, so personal and so deep, which is sometimes quite uncomfortable. But I guess that’s what Parcels is – at least at the moment – all of us having that individual journey, then trying to make a space so we can funnel everybody’s experiences into the same world and express it as a celebration.”
This renewed focus on the song as a self-contained world is also in how they present the music. Parcels have made the lyrics to every song they’ve ever written, across all albums, available on their website. “We all agreed on it,” Serret says. “It’s how we used to listen to music, even though we’re not that old. We were all into vinyl – you’d put the record on, and you’d have the lyrics in front of you, holding them as you listened. Not everyone’s going to go and buy vinyl, which is fine, but if you want to read along, it’s a really beautiful way to hear music.” On the site, Serret wanted their entire discography listed alphabetically, regardless of which album they came from. “That way you can start to see threads between them. Even though the songs are from different records, they all belong to the same lifetime project.”
Since November 2024, the band has been strategically tantalising fans with singles, most recently ‘Summerinlove’ in August – which means LOVED is edging closer to its full release and the tension is rising, Serret says. “I almost kind of picture a world where you finish an album and it’s out like the next day, you know, which is not how you do it. But let’s say it’s like the calm before the storm, in terms of emotions towards this record. Actually, I’m trying not to think about it.”
Not that the band has any spare time to think about it. This year, they’ve made appearances at Glastonbury, Coachella and Festival Estéreo Picnic in Colombia, and in autumn, they will begin touring Europe, North America and Australia. Their coping mechanism to keep the tone of the road shows loose? “Support band energy”, a phrase Serret says they borrowed from Nile Rodgers of the band Chic. The idea is to always play like you’re the unknown opening act, with everything to prove and everything to gain. “When we started out, we were the outsiders,” Serret says. “An Australian band in Germany, playing German festivals where no one knew our name. We used to rock up to the actual gig with this energy of like, ‘Alright, let’s pretend we’re the support band, we’ve gotta be the support band energy’. Like, you’ve gotta kind of come and win these people over, you’ve gotta steal fans away from other bands – not like, so intense. It was like a game, you know?”
Berlin’s not for everybody… The guys who moved back were pretty unhappy here towards the end
Even as their name climbs higher on festival posters, with later slots and bigger stages, Parcels keeps returning to this mindset. “This summer we realised we’d had a few flat shows. We said: ‘Okay, let’s bring back that hunger. Let’s play every gig like we’re here to steal the audience’s hearts.’” For Serret, that shift changes everything. “It feels like we’re fighting for something. And I’m allergic to that ‘too cool for school’ vibe. We felt together this summer. It was really fun, actually.” Case in point was Glastonbury in June, which Serret calls “their best show of the season”. “We didn’t expect that many people to be there from the start. It was packed, and we started in the late afternoon, so the light was golden. We’d played there eight years ago on a much smaller stage, so it felt like seeing the whole arc of our work come together.”
Berliners will have their own chance to witness Parcels’ support band energy in October, when they play a homecoming show at Max-Schmeling-Halle. It’s a stepping stone towards Serret’s dream of headlining Berlin’s Waldbühne, a 22,000-seat open-air amphitheatre in the former Olympic park, where Neil Young once held him rapt and where they later opened for the German rock band AnnenMayKantereit. “It’s magical,” Serret says, wistful. “Too big for us right now, but one day…” His other suggestion for where the band could happily take residence is Metropol in Schöneberg. “I could imagine playing there every weekend for a month,” he says. “After a summer of massive festivals, there’s something special about being close enough to see every face, every expression. You’re a little bit on edge, because everyone can really hear what you’re doing.”
I still love Berlin, but the way that I move through the city has maybe changed.
Despite building their career in Berlin, Parcels never quite fit into the city’s music scene; any space in Berlin for live gigs pales compared to its techno empire. “We came to Berlin thinking, ‘Oh, there’s gonna be like tons of bands there and we’re gonna be like, part of this scene’. And all we could see was bands on the internet, and we were always so jealous of those bands within a scene, you know, and we always felt like we didn’t have that in Berlin.”
This nagging feeling of missing out, or feeling displaced, only encouraged the band to dig deeper. “It almost kind of pushed us further into doing it live and to keep pressing our thing, because it almost made us feel a little bit special or a little bit different. We were like, well, we have to be the Berlin version.” Of course, the Berlin they moved to was cheaper. “When we moved here, it was the only city we could afford. There was no thinking, ‘Oh, we could live in Paris or London’ or whatever. Now, coffee costs the same as in Australia when you do the conversion, and other places are cheaper. But the city still gives you space to grow, to fail, to try weird stuff without anyone blinking an eye.”
Over the past decade, life has gotten in the way of the band’s once-singular focus: partners, a baby, new philosophies, hobbies that bleed into the work. It’s also why the long gaps between reunions don’t feel like drifting apart. “I find that really beautiful with all the other guys in the band.” Serret says. “I know these other people in their lives and other interests and it’s like you’re watching other people go through life in a beautiful way, together and separately. It’s not something to be kind of downplayed. It is really special.”
The drummer, now on the other side of success, doesn’t buy the idea that Parcels’ rise was a one-off, and believes a band can still make it big in Berlin the way they did. “Of course it could happen again,” he says, almost impatient at the thought. “There’s nothing special about us. You need luck, yes, but you also need determination. And you need to work hard. Keep your support band energy and stay hungry.”
- LOVED out Sep 12. See them live at Max-Schmeling-Halle on Oct 4.
