Neon Indian, Era Extrana
Reviewed by: Jean-Philip Guy
Neon Indian’s 2009 Psychic Chasms was anything but subtle: A grand cacophony of lo-fi keyboards that led to one of the more interesting albums of the last five years. His follow-up, the more restrained Era Extrana, isn’t as innovative as its predecessor, but this more focused work is definitely worth a listen.
The first thing that will strike the listener is the relative importance, and abundance, of lyrics. Indeed, one got the distinct feeling while listening to Psychic Chasms that Texas-born Alan Palomo’s vocals served only to augment his songs’ “sonic trace.” Need we say it? Era Extrana is about love lost. With song titles such as “Heart :Attack”, “Heart :Decay,” and “Heart : Release,” this is an easy leap to make. However, these titles aside, this album feels heavier, more emotionally charged, than his previous effort.
Composed in winter-struck Helsinki, Finland, Era Extrana feels at times like the darker side of bubblegum electronica. Mind you, it’s still a lot lighter than many genres, but there is a harsher side here to the songs. “The Blindside Kiss” is a wonderful example of this. This keyboard master manages somehow to make them howl like rhythm guitars playing at maximum distortion. They sound like something out of my precious grungy nineties: unrestrained, full of fury, real auditory sandpaper. What’s more, it comes after the fairly high pitched, skin deep (sound-wise that is) “Polish Girl.”
But even in those lighter tracks, the mix indicates vocals that now play a central part within song construction. No longer a mere accessory, it appears Neon Indian finally has something he wants to share, other than the fact that he “Should Have Taken Acid with You”. Of course, “Fallout” still sounds like it could have been pulled out of Top Gun, and that maybe Maverick and Iceman could have consummated their forbidden love on its sugary rhythms, but that’s simply the toolset Palomo’s chosen to work with. The feelings here expressed, this inability “[t]o fall out of love,” certainly are familiar to anyone who’s been left…and maybe to Maverick and Iceman, but I digress…
Using more organic-sounding rhythms, a hard feat, considering I believe our man is actually just one giant walking synthesizer, he does create these disquieting, slightly off-key notes which lead to darker moods. In “Hex Girlfriend,” “Halogen,” or “Future Sick”, he manages that precise feat, with the songs never feeling correctly mixed. It’s not disturbing per se, simply because lo-fi electropop keyboards can never really feel that way, but it does get us beyond that “bubblegum” territory, already occupied by oh-so many people and bands.
Generally, this album is beautifully mixed, with the three aforementioned “Heart” interludes serving as introduction, entr’acte and conclusion to the album. While “Polish Girl” makes our entry easier with its smooth aesthetics, the subsequent tracks set the darker path this album will follow. Lyrically, the album’s darkest point comes with “Future Sick”. In it, Palomo revisits punk’s old mantra, ”No Future,” because what use is a future without this love? Here however, he turns it around. Instead of taking us further down, as with the album’s first tracks, this time he takes us back up, ever so slightly. “Suns Irrupt” would be, and is, a great track in and of itself. Placed there, it becomes a poignantly melancholic closure to this expedition. The sun “irrupts” and he wakes up. It happens. You feel like crap, yet the world, nay the universe, still hops steadily along. That’s life. That’s love.
That said, let us not go overboard here. I don’t think that Neon Indian’s lyrical and emotional strength will ever rival that of Bon Iver’s, for example. Nor will his writing ever match that of greater lyricists such as Karkwa’s Louis-Jean Cormier or Elliott Smith. But what Era Extrana demonstrates is this capacity for music, or art in general, to channel truly and honestly these sentiments present during its creation. In this case, it’s clear that Palomo is hurting while recording this. To manage to convey sadness, even despair, through thick layers of eighties’ keyboards takes talent. A guitar can easily be sad: that lo-fi Casio your mother gave you in 1987, not so much.
The only caveat of Era Extrana is that it unfortunately slows Neon Indian’s musical progression. Indeed, Psychic Chasms felt much bolder. Less controlled experimentation led it to be a stimulating album that rarely repeated itself. The same cannot be said of Era as it strives to stick closer to a particular kind of atmosphere, which incidentally limits Palomo’s experimental drive. Thus while not as musically engaging as his first album, Era Extrana provides another type of experience that unfortunately isn’t as interesting. There are beautiful tracks here but overall, it is a weaker album musically. Its earnestness however does manage to nearly cover that up completely. There’s more heart here, broken though it is.