Post 1d: CONTEMPORARY REVIEW 2: Vega Intl. Night School - Neon Indian

Contemporary Review: Vega Intl. Night School - Neon Indian

8.8/10, STRONGLY RECOMMEND

Background: Neon Indian is the sole survivor of one of indie music's greatest over-hyped failures, the genre known as chillwave. What separated Neon Indian from the rest of the chillwave movement is that his music was actually good, and he could perform in a live setting with the best of them. Neon Indian is fronted by Alan Palomo, the only member of the band who actually matters. Palomo has charisma like few in the game at the moment, especially live. Disappointingly, he is neither neon nor Indian in person, but probably carries both traits at heart. Neon Indian's body of notable work includes their debut album Psychic Chasms, a fantastic album and a landmark of the chillwave experiment. That was followed up by the solid Era Extrana, which got lukewarm reviews from critics but I personally thought was just as good as his stellar debut. 

Review: Before I even talk about the music, let's take a minute to appreciate that cover. That is probably the best cover of this year. If I was playing a game where I had to pick a cover that looks exactly how the album it houses sounds, I would pick this one. It is bold, eye catching, stylish, risky, nostalgic, yet still forward thinking. Absolutely perfect. 

The album opens with a short, one minute long track titled "Hit Parade." This song is just a series of clicks and blips that lead into a bouncing groove, meant to serve as an opener as well as a flex of production muscle. It goes over well, although it is a bit shorter than I would have liked.

The next track is titled "Annie." The song features Palomo's typical falsetto vocals, but pushed higher in the mix than they have ever been. A reluctant singer at first, it is a refreshing change to hear Palomo's vocals so upfront and confident, because he truly has a great voice when it is as decipherable as it is here. The track features a slight reggae influence, especially apparent in the clicking guitar upstrokes during the verses. Already it is worth noting that Neon Indian is still taking cues from chillwave, such as synthesizers, sampling, and a fetishism of 80s synth pop, but has evolved into something entirely different. Palomo is now taking cues from modern pop, funk, soul, and most apparently nu-disco, all of which are influences that I strongly approve of. 

The next track is "Street Level" and, in my opinion, is the first time Palomo knocks it out of the park on the album. The synths are squelchy and shapeless, and the song staggers its way through its three minute run time. Palomo's vocal melody is ridiculously catchy, especially in the chorus. When the chorus hits, the song pulls itself together to sound like it might contain some semblance of organization, only to fall into a disorienting myth of synthesizers and samples again for the verse. It is a neat trick, and again, Palomo's vocal melody just works its way into your head and refuses to leave. 

Next is "Smut!" which is a largely forgettable, albeit hilarious track. I'm not going to explain the lyrics to you, but here they are. The song has again, a superbly catchy chorus and shows a humorous side to Neon Indian that is sometimes left out of his records. "Smut!" is followed by "Bozo" which is the album's second and best instrumental. "Bozo" is barely over a minute long, but features an absolutely viscous groove/beat, reminiscent of Daft Punk in the best way one can be related to them. The song is relentless and pounding, a great dance interlude for the album. 

The album hits a stride starting with "Bozo" and reaches its peak with the next song "The Glizy Hive." This is not only the finest song of the album, but it is also easily Palomo's best creation, a strong candidate for song of the year in 2015, and probably the best thing to have ever come out of chillwave. The song is infuriatingly catchy. Well produced is an understatement, with its punchy, groovy instrumental. Palomo gives his best vocal performance ever as well as his best production performance ever at the same time. The song is dancable, catchy, and satisfying in every way. There is arguably only one pop song written this year that can match it and I do not say that lightly. 

Palomo then knocks it out of the park again with "Dear Skorpio Magazine" "Slumlord" and "Slumlord Reprise." All three tracks give us more of what we expect from Neon Indian, but catchier, tighter, better produced, and more fun. Palomo again shows his sense of humor on "Dear Skorpio Magazine" while showing a more serious side on "Slumlord." Despite its heavier subject matter, "Slumlord" is a wildly fun track that is also quite catchy. Notice a common theme here? Every song here is irresistibly catchy. Palomo just knows how to write a hook and is a remarkably consistent songwriter, something we have all known for years but just now are recognizing. 

The album hits a bit of a rut with "Techno Clique" and "Baby's Eyes." Techno Clique features a strong beat that is considerably faster and more energetic than anything else here, but completely falls flat vocally. The melody is almost non existent, and the fantastic beat is only interesting for a few minutes, much short of the song's four and a half minute run time. "Baby's Eyes" is not a bad song by any means, but is not nearly as stellar as any of the other tracks either. It is Palomo's attempt at writing a ballad and it goes over well. The main limitation the track carries is it's unwieldy six and a half minute run time, which feels largely unnecessary. 

The album closes out on three high(ish) notes, starting with "C'est La Vie (Say the Casualties!)." This is the albums most fun track, and makes a run at being the album's second best until the last minute of the song which devolves into a repetition of the title that begins to get slightly grating after a while. "61 Cygni Ave" is the group's most overtly reggae influenced work. It is overall a fun track, albeit not one that particularly sticks with you. Unfortunately, reggae is not one of the genres that I listen to on my own accord, and I feel guilty deriding a reggae influenced song due to my lack of experience in the genre. The album then closes with "News from the Sun" which is the third major high point of this album. Palomo channels his inner Prince for this one. Palomo nails the voice, the inflections, the melody, and the charisma in a way that makes this song easily passable as one of Prince's better songs. A comparison to Prince is not something I just throw around, so for me to compare the skills of this relatively unknown artist to the greatest individual pop star in modern memory (sorry MJ) is a big deal. 

Overall, Alan Palomo has crafted a fantastic little record here. It is strongly nostalgic of the 1980s night life, yet is a distinctly modern sounding album. It does not serve some larger purpose or pretend to be anything other than a frighteningly catchy and fun dance album. Every song on here sounds like the soundtrack to a city at night, every song sounds like it could have been "that song" that everybody gets on the dance floor for back in the 80s. This is not the kind of album that will win many awards, top anybody's end of the year lists, or be respected as highly influential or as a modern classic. It is just a fantastic album for the time being, and just like that song that makes everybody get on the floor, it will soon pass and everybody will go home, back to their boring lives. 

HIGHPOINTS: "Annie" "Bozo" "Street Level" "The Glitzy Hive" "Slumlord" "C'est La Vie" "News From the Sun"

LOWPOINTS: "Techno Clique" 

Recommended albums: Multi Love - Unknown Mortal Orchestra (this album's competition for my personal pop album of the year) Currents - Tame Impala,  Purple Rain - Prince, Gossamer - Passion Pit

Post 1c: CONTEMPORARY REVIEW 1: Wiped Out! - The Neighbourhood

Contemporary Review: Wiped Out! - The Neighbourhood

3.5/10

Background: And by choosing this album to review I shall again destroy any hipster legitimacy that I had built back up by fawning over Deerhunter's Halcyon Digest. The Neighbourhood is an alternative rock/pop band from California, who have been known to dabble in R&B and rap influences from time to time. Their music and image often features a heavy handed black/white aesthetic that serves no real purpose except for being generic and to attract indie girls who like to tell people they are into other music but are just listening to mainstream pop with a different face/facade. Aside: there is nothing wrong with being that person, but if you read that and it stung a little bit, maybe you should expand your musical tastes or get over it. Anyways. The Neighbourhood's career can essentially summed up by this fight, with The Neighbourhood played by the heckler and society played by 6'7" WBC world heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder. The Neighbourhood came out of the gate talking a big game with smash hit singles like "Sweater Weather" (the soundtrack for every winter indie romance that year) and "Afraid," the song that all those faux hipsters listened to when they got home and began worrying about that aforementioned person cheating on them like they probably were. The Neighbourhood then proceeded to release their aggressively mediocre debut album that somehow managed to make both of those enjoyable singles sound worse in the context of the album. The rest of society, much in the same manner as WBC world heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder, just tore the band apart and forgot about them, but not before reminding them to never do something like that again (eerily similar, right?). In 2014, the band released an R&B mixtape with a multitude of rap features. I expected to have to break out the boxing gloves for this mixtape, but I was actually pleasantly surprised by it. Don't get me wrong, at best it's a 6.5 or 7/10, because the low points are some of the lowest of the band's career, but some of the songs on there would be fantastic tracks for any band. With that mixtape to mostly wash the taste of the debut album out of my mouth (ears?), I went into this album expecting to see the band pursue a more R&B oriented direction. 

Review: Before I do what I'm about to do to The Neighbourhood, I figure I should say some things that I like about the album just to get it out of the way. I think the cover art is cool. A few songs on here like"The Beach" have catchy vocal melodies here and there. "Daddy Issues" is a pretty good song with some nice production. "Ferrari" is a decent song if you don't listen to the lyrics. That is just about all I have to say in the way of compliments for this album, and those are responsible for all three and a half points that I am giving this album.

I knew this project was going to be a disaster within the first thirty seconds. The album opens with a thirty second track titled "A Moment of Silence." Fittingly, the track is 30 seconds of NOTHING. No sound. Just silence. I don't know where The Neighbourhood gets off thinking they've built up the clout to open their sophomore album, the one that makes or breaks them, with a stunt like that. Also what they did by pulling a move like that is placed the stakes so much higher on the upcoming songs, because if they suck (they do) it will only become more infuriating. Nice work boys, you're 0/1 on actual songs here.

My next major issue is the lyrical content. Now, I am not one of those people that need to be listening to music with deep lyrical content or a higher purpose. The amount of music from artists like Chief Keef and Gucci Mane on my computer can attest to that. I listen to this mess of romantic cheesiness more often than I should. Lyrics only mean anything to me when they are supposed to be the focus of the music rather than the instrumentation, the melody, the flow of the song, etc. The Neighbourhood is a band that focuses on lyrics. The production is supposed to be interesting, the melody lines are usually sweet, but their focus is intended to be on lyrical content and vocal performance, both of which are somehow the album's biggest fault and were the biggest faults I had with the first album as well. The emotions discussed here and the relationship turmoils that are the subject of nearly every song are so juvenile that it is sickening. I can remember thinking some of the exact things said on here in elementary school when I had a crush on a girl I sometimes saw on the playground. Any emotional issues addressed on this album are things that any complex and mature individual should have figured out by either their sixteenth birthday or their first multiple month relationship, whichever comes first. There is absolutely no evidence presented here that proves singer Jessie Rutherford has developed as a romantic individual in any way past the age of fourteen. It is no wonder almost all of these songs are about turmoil in relationships or break ups: if my significant other had the emotional depth of a child I would leave them too! The amount of insecurities shown on this album is just astounding, and none of them represent any of the insecurities that an emotionally developed individual is reasonably allowed to have. Being insecure is part of the human experience, and usually perfectly normal in a relationship, and there is a way to address them in singing that makes for some incredibly powerful music (See: Gossamer - Passion Pit, anything written by GIRLS, Father John Misty, Weezer etc). This is not expressed here. Rutherford's insecurities reek of selfishness and a lack of emotional depth, without any signs that might lead the listener to believe that the person singing them is self aware or repentant at all. The lines are delivered flatly and generically, with no discernible emotion other than the occasional laughable attempt to sound sexy or intimidating. Curiously enough, this was not a problem on the band's mixtape. The Jessie Rutherford on #000000 & #ffffff (the mixtape) was infinitely more compelling because he wasn't whining about relationship drama; he wasn't even looking for a relationship on the best songs. When Rutherford isn't whining about things only middle schoolers and the emotionally vapid relate to, he is desperately trying to be sexy. He sticks out his chest, puts on his blackest leather jacket/black jeans combo, slicks his hair back, and tries to be a bad boy, but ends up looking like a total idiot doing so (that picture is of rapper G Eazy, but nearly every complain I have here can be applied to his music as well). His buffoonish swagger is laughable at best, the false bravado of a person who is quite insecure at heart. Rutherford is blatantly trying to cash in on the intimidating/sexy dichotomy that The Weeknd (re) popularized and has progressively gotten worse at since his brilliant first mixtape (by the way, Wiped Out! is a gutless remake of that album that shamelessly borrows from it) but fails miserably at being anything other than that tool. Rutherford comes off as the kind of guy that walks up to a girl in a bar and starts making assertions in an attempt to be commandingly sexy all the while failing to recognize the woman's boyfriend next to her. He then proceeds to get his teeth knocked down his throat and then to crawl home and cry about that girl for the next couple weeks, about how close he would be to true love if it weren't for that tyrannical boyfriend of hers.

The second worst thing about this album are the artistic risks it takes. Now in principle I respect an artist willing to take risks, and nearly all of my favorite bands and the most important artists ever were those willing to take big risks (The Beatles, Sex Pistols, The Clash, David Bowie, Led Zeppelin, among many others). But the risks The Neighbourhood are calculated. They are not artistic, they are not dangerous. Just lazy. I already discussed the stunt they pulled in the opening that flopped miserably (actual footage of The Neighbourhood recording this album), but there are even more throughout the album. The title track features a noisy build up in the second half of the song that is meant to be artistic but comes off as a gutless attempt at artistic pacing and longer song structure solely for the sake of having long songs. They then try this disaster again on "Baby Come Home 2 / Valentines" and it fails just as miserably as the first, as if these guys don't realize that their album does not carry enough artistic merit to warrant experiments. One must learn how to write actual songs before they can experiment with them, and The Neighbourhood refuses to acknowledge this. The rest of the songs on here sound like awful attempts to write a Weeknd song. The "dark" production and psuedo-sexy vocals remind me of what the Weeknd would sound like if he lost all his charisma and talent in a freak accident (the way The Weeknd's last few albums have gone I fear this might have been what actually happened). The Neighbourhood try to be The Weeknd, but end up being more akin to Justin Beiber's newest album Purpose. They both fall laughably flat at what they try to do, with both singers sounding detached and sexless, and using their looks and aesthetics to sell records to teenage girls who do not know know any better. I bet the band felt really clever when they wrote a song about California, its addictive nature, and how it is impossible to leave. If this sounds like a familiar plot, it is because one of the most well known tracks off the most well known album from one of the most well known rock bands of all time did the exact same idea first. This is an album filled with artistic flops left and right, and when the album isn't busy making embarrassing decisions it goes back to pitifully trying to be The Weeknd.

Perhaps the most telling aspect of this album is the fact that I am not actually listening to it as I review it. I force myself to get through maybe one or two songs and then I have to change it to something else. Perhaps this just is not a project for somebody like me, but I can not sit here and honestly recommend that anybody should give it a try. The only reason I can see listening to this album might be a good idea is to get a feel for what not to do with a pop album. Perhaps I am being dramatic, but that is my job here. If you like The Neighbourhood or the type or entry level pop indie they provide there are some things to enjoy here, but you should probably listen to something else instead. The public is going to have a field day with doing anything but listening to this album and it will probably end the career of The Neighbourhood. Everybody has already forgotten about The Neighbourhood again and it has been a little over a month since the album's release. End of review, I can't do it anymore.

Highpoints: "Daddy Issues," the instrumental on "Ferrari," the vocal melody on "R.I.P. 2 My Youth"

Lowpoints: "Single" "A Moment of Silence" "Prey" "Cry Baby" "Wiped Out" "Baby Came Home 2 / Valentines"

Recommended  (better) Albums: House of Balloons - The Weeknd, Wildheart - Miguel, AM - Arctic Monkeys