Neon Indian: "Slumlord"
Sometime around 2011′s Era Extraña, Neon Indian‘s Alan Palomo relocated from Denton, Texas to Brooklyn. How much the city brings to bear on Neon Indian’s forthcoming VEGA INTL. Night School remains to be seen. But judging from the title of “Slumlord”, the follow-up single to the sun-kissed Balearic beauty of “Annie”, one hopes that Palomo isn’t exacting revenge on a deadbeat landlord for refusing to turn on the heat the past two winters.
Between the new cover art—positing Palomo as a lost synth-pop artist on Alfa Records circa 1983—and the forty-second synth prelude that opens “Slumlord”, VEGA INTL. Night School is shaping up to be his most conceptual and assured effort, and perhaps also his strangest. As “Annie” hinted at, Palomo has found his groove. “It’s easy to be the miser/ When no one’s the wiser,” he sings in a near-falsetto on “Slumlord”, against a pliant shuffle that hits its stride on the turnaround. Palomo’s lyrics arise and get submerged again—before the outro, where everything swirls into a live setting led by a Spanish announcer—with lines about “shaking our pockets loose” and another that goes, “They say that this place ain’t got a heart/ I can still hear the beat.” The effect is like dancing faces glimpsed for one flash in an otherwise darkened nightclub, suggesting one last gasp of the ecstatic before the hard reality of NYC life returns the morning after. Palomo sings that the rent is too damned high, but he’s dancing anyway.
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