Music, Style & Culture

Neon Indian: ‘Writing An Album In A Studio Was An Experiment’

Neon Indian chats about the new album, his sound and the Spanish language.

Neon Indian is the pseudonym of Texas born and raised, Alan Palomo. His mixture of crooked pop, unruly synthesizers and experimental electro was what made him an instant success in 2009; two years later, and he’s back - back with a new, more grown up sound which he describes as his "rite of passage." I got an interview with the lovely man, whilst on his tour, and had an informed chat about the new album, his influences, his sound and the Spanish language.

So, two weeks into your tour, how is it going?
Great so far, it’s fascinating to be able to play all of these songs that I laboured on for so long. Plus the band have only just come together; the first few shows were kind of an adjustment, sort of getting everyone comfortable with the new material. But I’ve always found that at first we try to nail the songs as best as we can, and then just deviate them and fuck them up in as many fun and interesting ways as we can to keep them interesting from night to night.
Plus the reception’s been great, it’s always tough to gauge when you’re spending your day on a van, travelling from city to city. It’s still always funny being onstage and singing a song you wrote not long ago, and having it sung back to you.

The latest album, 'Era Extraña', is definitely different from your last - how do you think you’ve changed musically?
It’s a rite of passage from the last album in a weird way, an experiment to see if I could write an album in a studio and trust someone enough to share my vision with them; plus for them to help me mix it because normally so much character comes from that part of the recording process. Plus I didn’t use any samples, so it’s been pretty important to self-generate all of its content. Now I start with a sound that’s fucked up instead of turning something into being fucked up. As a personal accomplishment it’s been more about that.

What does "Era Extrana" mean?
Well, ‘Era Extrana’ means many different things, it’s both a verb and adjective. It can mean strange, and as a verb, it is to miss something or someone. And I just liked the idea that those feelings could be rooted down to one word. It definitely meant something personally to me.

What about influences? Who do you cite as a musical inspiration?
My dad’s been a musician all of his life, and so has my brother, plus pop music was everywhere in my household; it was an inescapable influence. A lot of Prince and the Beatles, but I was always more compelled to see what people were doing who used the standard pop writing guidelines, only injected it with bizarreness and grating it with experimentalism. Also growing up in the environment I did, it was hard to find people into the same things as me. I was romanticised by the idea that somewhere there was an amazing party that I wasn’t at. The soundtrack to which was ‘Discovery’ by Daft Punk – it created a fantasy world for me.

You’ve obviously always been musically talented, but what’d you be doing if you weren’t Neon Indian?
I probably would’ve finished film school a few months ago, and I think I’d want to look into that. I possess this social ineptitude that only makes me want to be in rooms for a period of time, thinking about a project and then fill a canvas or play with synthesisers.

What made you stay with Neon Indian? You’ve had lots of musical projects, and a clear interest for film?
I was definitely surrounded by a couple of projects, and the main reason I stuck with Neon Indian is because it felt the most natural. I didn’t over think anything; it was just about taking inspiration from music I loved and injecting it into these very personal stories. It was always about something that’d happened to me or was pressing on my mind; with the other projects it wasn’t like that. This was just more me.

Neon Indian's new album 'Era Extrana' is out now via Transgressive Records.