The Neon Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow…
For the last ten years, it has been one of my more covert missions to get every single person I know to listen to Neon Indian. It…hasn’t really worked, shouting about the Alan Palomo musical project isn’t exactly what you’d call subtle. Neither is sneaking at least one Neon Indian song into every shared playlist anyone ever sends to me. But if you want to know where this desire stems from, all you need do is experience in full the synthetic future-funk majesty that is the project’s third and final album.
VEGA INTL. Night School
Neon Indian
Chillwave | 2015
Alan Palomo’s Neon Indian project was one of the progenitors of the chillwave genre, an offshoot of the vaporwave school of nostalgia for all things VHS-distortion. But where vaporwave was almost hyper-obsessed with aesthetics—visual and sonic—chillwave added the idea of writing actual songs to go with it, instead of just recreating a score to an 80’s afterschool PSA.
Along with the more immediately popular Washed Out and the much more radio-friendly Toro y Moi, Neon Indian, and their first album, Psychic Chasms, ushered in a wave of hipsters obsessing over Casio keyboards and analog Moogs. But behind the “liking it ironically” of it all, there was some seriously great songwriting on tracks like “Deadbeat Summer” and “Should Have Taken Acid with You,” not to mention the gorgeous synth compositions of “6669 (I Don’t Know If You Know)” and the instantaneous rush provided by that first beat drop on “Local Joke.”
But chillwave as a movement died almost as soon as it entered the public consciousness (though you can thank it for bringing back cassette tapes, even if it took a few years), leaving Alan Palomo with only his songwriting and a lack of scene. So he produced 2011’s Era Extraña, which kept many of his synthetic choices, but removed the faux-degredation and lo-fi, and added layer upon layer of shoegaze-inspired reverb. It gave us semi-popular tracks like “Polish Girl” and “Hex Girlfriend,” while also providing us with his sludgiest track yet, “The Blindside Kiss,” and his most outwardly fun, the bubbly “Future Sick,” and “Arcade Blues,” complete with its 16-bit Mortal Kombat samples.
But then…silence. Palomo and Neon Indian essentially dissapeared from the scene as we waited. And thank Thor we did, because what came to us four years later was a hypnagogic synthpop masterpiece.
Hit Parade
“Hit Parade” essentially functions as an intro track, but unlike previous albums’ introductions, this one is a full overture. Each part of the minute-long song showcases the various synth patches about to be used throughout the rest of VEGA. It’s not much from a runtime standpoint, but sets the mood efficiently and effectively. It’s so good at its job, it feels weird to skip it.
Annie
“Annie” is the first proper song and the first single from this album cycle. It is a tight dancehall-inspired number that probably owes more to disco than to anything from the 80’s its keyboards mimic. But it’s also a masterful showcase of how VEGA is going to be different—very different—from Alan’s previous output: the moody sound-drenching and heavy reverb are out; white-hot pop-structured dance tracks are waaay in. “Annie” is also part of the incredibly loose “story” of this concept album, as Alan looks for his … girlfriend(?) by setting up a hotline for witnesses to call. To be honest, I’ve been listening to this album nearly constantly for ten years and I still don’t know if even Alan Palomo understands the plot. But none of that matters when your lighting the dancefloor on fire.
Street Level
“Street Level” is a grimy, sleazy introduction to the other side of the album: sloshing, choppy mixing and production that gives off a very Sun Araw feel, like something is vaguely off. The sound perfectly accompanies Palomo’s tale of drinking and stumbling from one DJ gig to another, one late-night party to the next. The chorus clears some of the woozy head-stuffing away and amps up the funk level, making for one of the most memorably off-kilter songs of Neon Indian’s discography.
Smut!
That funk shifts into overdrive on “Smut!,” and amps up the strutting groove as well. As Palomo weaves a tale of unrequited love from a woman who strung him along for her own amusement, the synths mirror his mentions of neon signs, dingy alleyways, and cheap polyester clothing. One of my personal favorite moments on the album comes after the second verse, when he adds an incredibly Pretty Hate Machine-inspired keyboard breakdown, before opening the chorus back up with an extra-wriggly bass line
Bozo
The finale of “Smut!” runs directly into the highly addictive, extremely bouncy “Bozo.” Layered in hyper-nostalgic synths and drum kit patches, Palomo takes us on a sample-heavy tour to the trashy undercarriage of the album’s inspiration. Particularly of note is his repetition of the name Vivien Vee, a retired Italo-disco singer and magazine model, who influenced Palomo through Skorpio magazine (a name that will become relevant imminently) along with the line “Friday After Dark,” which was the old Cinemax promo for their… *cough* adult entertainment.
The Glitzy Hive
The glitching end of “Bozo” drops us directly into the opening salvo of “The Glitzy Hive,” a sweaty disco rager if ever there was one. With Palomo’s signature queasy-shifting synths and plenty of hand-clapping groove to go around, the song is one of the highlights of the entire chillwave era. And the full-on party atmosphere makes sure the good times never end, with its repetition of the chorus, “the party, she’s at the monster party,” that’s the juxtaposition to the petty drama going on in the rest of the track, or the rest of the album. It serves as the perfect frivolity, sung by a crowd in a packed club, as all great dance tracks should be.
Dear Skorpio Magazine
See, I said imminently. And dear me, isn’t this just the bounciest, strutting-est song you ever did hear? I’m bopping up and down in my chair as I’m writing this just thinking about this ridiculously juicy beat. The lyrical content is some of Palomo’s more… NC-17 storytelling that goes along with the sleazier half of the album. The chorus in particular presents a wonderful double-interpretation: is he writing the magazine in an effort to find the woman of his dreams, à la Craigslist’s Missed Connections? Or is he reminiscing over a pretend relationship he had with a woman (most likely the previously mentioned Vivien Vee) he saw in the titular soft-core magazine? Either way, it’s an endlessly fun listen that will leave you with a little pep in your step every time you think of it.
Slumlord
“Slumlord” begins a slew of much more EDM-centered club-mix songs that cover much of the back half of the album, and goddamn is it a rush! The song begins slow, but that ramps up quickly to reveal a whirling dervish of a beat complete with shakers and one hell of a bass line. The lyrics are some of Palomo’s most politically charged, even if they retain his signature kitschy nostalgia for the seedy side of things. But instead of a call to revolt, it’s a call to live, one where the dancefloor of your local dive is the perfect place to sweat all your problems away, a place where rich and poor are alike, tangled in a mass of dancing bodies.
Slumlord’s Re-lease
The “Re-lease” section is really an extended outro to its parent track, but it plays an important role. It takes the background beat of “Slumlord” and ramps it up to 11, adding live conga and wood blocks, and bringing the kick drum further forward in the mix. “Slumlord”s Italo-disco is turned into straight four-on-the-floor drum-and-bass electronica. The transition is a crucial one, as it perfectly fades out the vaporwave aesthetics of the first half for a more clean, sparkling set of synths for what follows.
Techno Clique
“Techno Clique” is as close to techno as Neon Indian will ever get, but this is no Happy Hardcore. Instead, Palomo chooses a more subtle nod to the likes of Four Tet, as the song picks up where the “Slumlord” duo left off with just a kick drum and bass, then slowly builds over the course of the song to an explosive nightclub anthem. The hook slithers through the dark spaces left by the beat, making “Techno Clique” one of the most deviously addictive songs in the project’s catalog.
Baby’s Eyes
“Baby’s Eyes” is a hard reset on the beat. The transition between it and “Techno Clique” is nothing but a hard cut, the only one this stark on the album. The track then starts as neo-noir balad, shadowy and starkly lit by only the most fleeting of sparkling synth chords. But then the chorus kicks in and there’s glimpses of the upbeat slow-dancer that could be. When it comes around a second time, it leaves in its wake a massive two-minute electronic breakdown that could easily be the soundtrack to a slow-motion spy chase.
C’est La Vie (say the casualties!)
When the hypnagogic vaporwave comes back on “C’est La Vie,” it comes back in a big way. Once upon a time, this was my favorite, most-listened-to song by Neon Indian, and the bones that make up that addictive quality are still there for me ten years later. The silly, warbling synths that open the track, the impossibly high falsetto. Then there’s the ridiculous breakdown (“At the creepshow, at the creepshow”) that leads into the conclusion, with its strutting, bouncy perfection, complete with hand claps and rocking 80’s guitars. It’s the most fun I’ve heard in a long time.
61 Cygni Ave
“61 Cygni Ave” brings back the vague “setting” of the album with another tale of sleazy, unsanctioned street parties in a back alley in the “bad” part of town. Backed by the strumming of an open-flanged guitar, the song swings and sways, bumps and grinds as Palomo describes the various personalities and characters he runs into meandering through this illegal block party. The beat, the scene, the blaring night music, the catchy-as-hell chorus, this track is a monster.
News from the Sun
For the final track, Prince…erm, I mean, Alan Palomo takes the guise of a live recording (the subtitle is “live bootleg.” It is a pleasant fiction, but is just that. Any sense that this is recorded in front of an audience is kind of dispelled the instant you don’t, you know, hear the audience, except for a couple pretty obviously sampled crowd noises toward the end.
But none of that is to say the song isn’t great. It most assuredly is. “News from the Sun” is easily Neon Indian’s most easy going, and nostalgic song. Rather than hiding his influences behind a veil of needle fuzz and tape tracking effects, the song is Palomo’s most straightforward presentation of his adoration for the Purple One (that opening crack was no joke, this could pretty easily pass for a Prince song). The calm reassurance of the guitar strumming, the simplicity of the synth hooks, the beautiful arrangement of the synthetic orchestra during the break, it all adds up to a perfect close to a perfect album.
A whopping eight years would pass after VEGA before Palomo would release anything again (the vastly underrated World of Hassle), though never again under the Neon Indian name. Since he’s still actively working, this is no sad ending (like the Bear in Heaven one; come back already!), but it is one where our hero missed his time to capitalize on critical and popular good will.
Chillwave is all but dead. Somewhere out there, George Clanton is trying to keep up the good fight, but where once scratchy quavers of neon static lit our musical nights, there is now a bizarre, unearned nostalgia for the 90’s. I grew up then; eww, no.
I would however like to pin the huge wave of synthpop perfection that’s been coming back in recent years on the vapor-/chillwave movement. Magdalena Bay and Nation of Language are certainly great acts in their own right, but I like to think, even if it’s just me, that they were at least slightly inspired to attempt the deep pull from the 80’s by the likes of Alan Palomo and Neon Indian. He is a painter of sound who so perfectly captures the era he’s referencing that you can picture it through only music.
… It doesn’t hurt that every song is an A+ danceable earworm either.
Happy listening!
