A SCENE IN RETROSPECT: Neon Indian – “Vega Intl. Night School”

‘It’s an idealistic fantasy of sorts. Things aren’t perfect – you only need to hear a song like “Slumlord” to see that even in a kitschy, sensual world like the one the album builds, capitalistic exploitation is still prevalent – but it’s the kind of thing you might imagine for yourself as a teen dreaming big (or at least medium and realistic) about adult life.‘

-David Rodriguez

Release date: October 16, 2015 | Mom + Pop | Instagram | Website

Nostalgia is one of the biggest driving forces of our culture, both on the side of the creators and the consumers. Few people can add anything of value to the thin veneer of those re-packaged ‘good old times’ without either taking away from the desired feeling or leaning towards the present day too much for comfort. Alan Palomo (FKA Neon Indian) has perfected a take on ’80s sounds that’s so seedy it eludes the rose-tinted glasses; look at Vega Intl. Night School for reference.

I’m not exactly sure how Neon Indian’s Vega Intl. Night School first crossed my path. I vaguely remember first hearing it right around the end of 2019, well after the album’s hype cycle would have reached me. Maybe it was an algorithm recommendation because I had listened to a thing or two tagged ‘vaporwave’ but it got my attention. And as the 2020 pandemic set in and I found myself with a lot of extra listening time, good god did the album get its hooks in me. The blend of synths, funk, and hallucinogenic haze felt so novel to me then, and years on, I’m still breaking it out at least monthly for a revisit.

It strikes me that Vega Intl. Night School must have been a bit of a wild listen for existing fans of Neon Indian at the time. The previous works of Alan Palomo, for my limited familiarity with them, felt much more outwardly trippy, being accepted as vital documents of chillwave as a genre. Those albums were very overtly trippy with some pop/rock roots, the vocals were a bit subdued, and the production quality skewed heavily in the tastefully lo-fi direction.

Vega Intl. Night School, by comparison, feels very different. Once the synth intro of “Hit Parade” gives way to “Annie”, Neon Indian reveals a host of new tricks. The songwriting feels so much funkier and livelier, and Palomo levelled up a lot as a vocalist. “Annie” hits like a truck with its absurdly catchy refrain, and I’m pretty sure at first listen I was singing along with the chorus by the second time I was hearing it. It’s no wonder it’s one of Neon Indian’s most popular songs, and hell, it’s only setting the scene.

Across its runtime, Vega Intl. Night School just scores hit after hit, with practically every song having its own distinctive feel and vibe. The oozing, effects-laden bass thrust of “Street Level” is an absolute trip replete with its own outstanding hook, while “Smut!” leans hard on that slow-mo vaporwave sound that was getting to be so popular in 2015. One of my favorite things about the album as it progresses is also how the very production is weaponized as its own kind of instrument. Songs like the Prince-esque “The Glitzy Hive” and “Baby’s Eyes” have a gauzy, unclear sonic quality while the centerpiece cycle of “Slumlord” through “Techno Clique” hit with perfect clarity and a sense of space that ends up packed full of sonic layering. It’s particularly fun when Palomo shifts production style mid-song just for impact, like in the suddenly more spacious bridge of “The Glitzy Hive”. Eventually ending up on the blatantly hallucinogenic “C’est La Vie (say the casualties!)” and the more straight-laced pop of “News From the Sun (live bootleg)”, Vega Intl. Night School is an absolute journey of a listen.

For all the nuts and bolts details I could rattle off about Vega Intl. Night School, the more important detail to me is that the album is just endlessly catchy and genuinely fun to revisit every single time. Palomo isn’t taking himself too seriously throughout (refer to the moment in “Smut!” when a lyrical album title namedrop is followed by someone saying ‘hey, that’s the name of the record‘), but it never feels like the album is trying to be openly silly (see the more emotional hook of “Baby’s Eyes”). There’s a diversity of approach that makes the album endlessly replayable, or at the very least provides plenty of moods for pick and choose listening.

I’d honestly be hard-pressed to pick favorites from this album. They change listen to listen based on moods, and the album is just so damned good throughout. “Annie” is of course an absolute banger to kick the album off, while “Baby’s Eyes” provides a late-album emotional heft that I just adore. But I guess the easiest answer would be that cycle of “Slumlord”, “Slumlord’s Re-lease”, and “Techno Clique” for being a 12 minute run of sheer electronic bliss, from the unfairly catchy swirl of “Slumlord” with its great chorus and nimble basslines to the seductive, hypnotic layering build of “Techno Clique”. It’s just sublime, and proves an easy pick for an album centerpoint.

So many words that amount to plain gushing, but stumbling across Vega Intl. Night School was a bit of a revelation for me when I heard it. It reinvigorated my love for electronic music in a time period where I’d moved away from the sound, and pointed me down the path to other chillwave-adjacent projects like Washed Out and Toro y Moi that I otherwise may not have given a chance. Not only that, but Neon Indian (with later help from Drab Majesty’s Modern Mirror) reassured me that I wouldn’t become one of those people who decide their favorite albums early on and never evolve. It wormed its way right into my personal Top 15, and in one of those hack ‘desert island’ situations, I might even choose to throw away some metal or prog album and keep this one on hand just for variety.

Vega Intl. Night School even has a personal importance for me being an album I listed as a favorite when I first applied as a writer here at Everything Is Noise. I distinctly remember David (who I believe is joining me on this feature) and I sharing a small gush session over the album mid-interview, and I’m pretty sure I interrupted him reviewing Alan Palomo’s follow-up album World of Hassle (also outstanding) for that interview. All told, Neon Indian is responsible for one hell of an important album to me with Vega Intl. Night School, and I’m sure after my multiple brush up listens for this feature, I’m gonna go right back to listening to this album. Cheers!

Neon Indian paints in pastels, and Vega Intl. Night School carries that trend into every LSD lounge in town. Every track carries glitzy gusto that is sleazy just enough to help loosen everyone’s ties. Alan Palomo has always been a bastion for trippy headspaces, having mastered this sound from the jump with Psychic Chasms, but instead of letting everything bleed together in a blend that carries substantial amount of tape hiss, and adapted that to the lost fuzzy gaze all throughout the introspective effort that is Era Extrena, Palomo finds this new lane, and it’s fitting.

Every track feels like the intro to lost VHS relics with bright bouncing guitar slaps that glitter like ’80s R&B, as he does his best to ride those with comparable pop melody-laced vocals. Alan’s approach to music has always carried a colorful amount of auteur with all three releases acting like a shifting kaleidoscope with loose enough connections to provide expansion into their own subjective universe, but also interconnected with unique qualities that define what Neon Indian has always done well.

“Dear Skorpio Magazine” is drenched in Prince qualities, and in between the funky hold music sonic assault of archaic sound utilization that gives any audiophile tingles, we have bright and beautiful moments like “Slumlord” and the beachy breakaway “Annie” that plays out like most beautiful oceanside sunset. Later we get danceable club music with chamber-vocals-french-disco classic “Techno Clique”, and the dark synth wormy romp of “C’est La Vie” with Palomo channeling his best version of Michael Angelakos, and ending with a yacht rock meets Prince (again) classic with “News From The Sun”.

It’s an impressive revelation that has one of the blog-era artists channeling forgotten eras that seem common place these days, with Palomo, as always, being the ahead of the times visionary that he always has been.

With the Neon Indian moniker officially retired, we can only grasp onto the trilogy provided that defined a run that shines as much as it shimmers with all the glitter, strobe, and psychedelics one could sonically summon. Thanks for everything, Alan.

I’ve already talked a fair amount about the vibe of Vega Intl. Night School for a great feature we used to run on the intersection of music and complex emotions. It’s a key component to what Alan Palomo pulled off under the name Neon Indian.

It’s an idealistic fantasy of sorts. Things aren’t perfect – you only need to hear a song like “Slumlord” to see that even in a kitschy, sensual world like the one the album builds, capitalistic exploitation is still prevalent – but it’s the kind of thing you might imagine for yourself as a teen dreaming big (or at least medium and realistic) about adult life. Living in a big city, barely affording anything, going out at night in spite of that former point, flanked by more hot people than you know what to do with, and making the kind of friends you probably shouldn’t be. What would your mother say? No matter – you’re 20-something and feel invincible.

It’s a bit anachronistic too. Like, even though this album embodies so much of the neon-soaked ‘80s, I still imagine everyone around this time has flip phones more than smart ones, a slight relief to the psyche for many reasons, chiefly that it’s a bit harder to have your hedonistic depravity caught in HD video and shared online. Lines of blow? No problem – you didn’t get that internship in the state government anyway (or maybe that would have heightened your chances).

With just enough technology to connect on mutual desires – sex, money, drugs – it becomes your driving force. You’re going out more and more each week, late to work, late on bills, you go out more to forget it all. You meet people you can’t have. Your feet are blistered from late night stupors. The music becomes your second fluent language, warbly synths a particular dialect. The drums match your heartbeat – techno-like asides align with your time on the dancefloor; the calmed, pop-minted tunes imitate your pulse slowed from the committal to ecstasy earlier on. Is this really your life? No way – it surely can’t be this easy.

Every day’s an opportunity to hide from your problems and ignore the greater world. Turning inward allows focus, acting on every whim you can in narcissistic worship to yourself. Calls from family are ignored, the voicemails pile up like dirty laundry. Your diet is shit now, only eating out of the inconvenient necessity to propel your body forward to the next night’s bar or gathering of beach-tanned scoundrels more fucked up than you. You heard one of them is a murderer named Frankie, and avoid eye contact just in case. Are you in too deep? No brakes – it’s too late to stop the ride.

In the best way possible, with the protective separation afforded to you by fiction, Vega Intl. Night School is indebted to an especially seedy, prurient apathy outside of your own mind. It’s not malicious (you know, except for the pulp cinema-like tales of femme fatale exploits on “Baby’s Eyes” and the aforementioned “Slumlord”), but it’s decidedly unsafe, like the longer you’re exposed to its world, like the cautionary tales of sci-fi-level virtual reality, you get stuck in it. The veneer of safety peels away. You start to feel the world and its people’s pain.

In that sense, Vega Intl. Night School is well-intentioned, empathetic even. The characters drawn into the world – based on Palomo and his pals or not – could be any of us. Stumbling into a situationship with a lethally beautiful woman that’s way out of your league, at the mercy (so none) of a scumbag landlord charging up the ass who won’t even upkeep the homes he rents, or just spending a night on the street with friends. It feels like a dream – or a nightmare, but an alluring one.

I’ve just hardly ever listened to an album constructed in this particular way, where it feels very informed by reality, stretched and exaggerated, sure, but what isn’t? I listen to rap and metal, brother, I love a good story with world-building. And I haven’t even touched on the sound of Vega Intl. Night School – it’s apparent on listen. I will say that “Slumlord” is one of my favorite songs of all time. The production’s amazing and varied while always being danceable. The lyrics and vocals are immaculate.

Your mileage may vary, but I find the whole LP to be evergreen. With perhaps some technical exceptions, this album could have dropped in the ‘80s at some point and done numbers, it could have dropped a decade from now in the future and been a hit, but it dropped ten years ago when I was really hitting my explorative phase as I’ve gone over before, which is the reason why we’re here. Since then, Alan Palomo dropped the Neon Indian name and just went by his own full name for 2023’s World of Hassle, a somehow worthy follow-up to Vega Intl. Night School almost a decade in the making. It was more mature and far reaching in terms of influences and sound, but retained its sexy, sultry, playful, nighttime spirit.

I love this album so much. I love Palomo’s inventiveness and dedication to a vibe. This dude is a magician. Let yourself get bewitched by his sonic arcana.