With his solo recording project Neon Indian, the solo recording project of Mexican-born, Denton, TX-based singer/songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and electronic music artist Alan Palomo has received both national and international attention with the release of three full-length albums and an EP — Psychic Chasms, Era Extraña, the Errata Anex EP and his most recent album Vega Intl. School — comprised of slickly produced, heavily 80s inspired synth pop that clearly draws from Michael Jackson, Prince as well as 80s synth-based R&B.
With the release of Vega Intl. Night School last year, Palomo and Neon Indian quickly became a JOVM mainstay; in fact, you might recall that I wrote about the album’s first single “Annie,” an immensely slick and crowd pleasing single that lyrically and thematically draws from Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” and “Dirty Diana” as the song’s narrator is a bit of a lovelorn fool, who can’t find his missing girlfriend either because she suddenly skipped town, never to return — or perhaps much more darkly, because the song’s narrator has had something to do with it. Sonically, the song is comprised of a taut yet sinuous bass line, angular funk guitar chords and shimmering and cascading synth stabs paired with Palomo’s plaintive falsetto, which reminds me quite a bit of Rush Midnight‘s +1 EP but funkier.
The recently released music video is a gloriously goofy video shot on grainy VHS tape and splices live footage of Palomo with his backing band in Japan, versions of shitty chatline commercials, footage of Palomo’s character being questioned and then beaten by the police, Palomo doing his best Moonwalker-era Michael Jackson impression, an interview of Palomo’s character being interviewed on a Morton Downey, Jr.-like talk show, complete with shittier special effects and cuts, and a follow-the-bouncing ball crawl on the bottom of the screen. And as a child of the 80s, public access TV actually looked that awful and for a song that draws so much from 80s synth pop, the aesthetic is fitting.
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