Neon Indian is a current electropop band that has connections to Denton Tx. They've recently been attracting large amounts of mainstream accolades from major press. Their debut album "Psychic Chasms" was designated Best New Music by music website Pitchfork Media . On Feburary 11, 2010 they performed a medley of their songs "Terminally Chill", and "Ephemeral Artey" on NBC's Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. It took me some time to digest their sound but when I did I came out really impressed. My great friends, from San Antonio, and I met the vocalist and composer Alan Palomo (really humble and stand up guy that I believe is truly deserving of the recent spotlight) around the summer of 2008 when he was performing under his previous project Ghosthustler at Strawberry Fields in Denton TX. Alan and his bandmates at the time (other great guys and musicians that I befriended) invited us to their private house show the next day and we had a blast hanging with him and his crew.
I guess one can say Neon Indian's music is part of this whole 80's revisionism movement that has been going on for awhile. However that's not to say their music is a regurgitation of days gone by, on the contrary I believe their music to be fresh. Their sound has been described by one blogger as "a cassette mixtape left to bake in a Celica for 25 years." A Celica? Really? Why not that customized Trans AM called KITT in the Knightrider series? On second thought perhaps we should leave out any and all associations to David Hassolhof. They've been filed under the genres of hypnogogic pop and chill wave by bloggers often to the dismay of the bands. Bands/Artists kind of hate categories u know. Neon Indian's music has a melted almost drugged analog retro feel that is counterpointed well by some current electronic subtleties and beats.They take som retro dance synth grooves from the halls of the time of dayglow, VHS and "bizarre love triangle" and infected it with a personal melancholic dissonance from our current climate of the late 2000's.
2 comments:
Great blog! you hit a lot highlights of his musical background and what we may expect in the future. It's funny how far Alan has come from that day, me & Rey & you (Bernardo) be-friended him & his former band-mates. Just talking to him about our musical preferences it was easy to see his awesome grasp of electronica & rock. I'm still digesting Psychic Chasms because it's quite a 360 from his stuff in Ghosthustler which i preferred for obvious reasons. It's not to suggest this new work isn't great in it's own right. It's just different for my taste. I crave a lot of melody & a lot the songs in Psychic Chasms are a bit disjointed collected pieces of jagged electro with lots and lots of color. But, I guess that's the beauty of it, it's gonna take a few run-throughs to fully enjoy.
Neon Indian!
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