Neon Indian

Overview

Neon Indian’s debut album Psychic Chasms could have easily fallen victim to the short attention span of our fickle friend The Internet. It was almost dangerously hyped — indie bloggers went mental for it, it then got mentions on a million “Best of 2009” lists and it had a nice back story of an initially anonymous composer sitting in his bedroom writing songs, probably surrounded by Class B drug paraphernalia and half-finished mugs of Kool-Aid.

That composer actually turned out to be Alan Palomo, a 20-year-old Mexico native who moved to Austin, Texas in 2007. And Neon Indian's music didn’t get sucked into a digital abyss because it’s the sound that matters and the sound is magic. Sure it subscribes to all those words like “retro”, “lo-fi”, “synth-pop” and “chillwave” that are now banded about by people who probably don’t even know what “fi” is short for, but it’s also unquestionably progressive.

Neon Indian’s latest album Era Extraña is testament to this, a darker collection of songs that would provide a fitting atmosphere if you were completely isolated in a dark Helsinki winter battling an inner Werner Herzog monologue. Or, you know, if you were hanging out at The Standard with a couple of friends and a cold beer.