is a studied album that doesn’t try to hide its influences, finding its groove somewhere between psychedelic rock, Italo-disco, and synthpop, backed by reggae and Balearic beats it’s Hall & Oates and the Flaming Lips meets Prince in Ibiza, all reimagined in downtown New York. A direct result of watching B-movies, like Street Trash and Bronx Warriors, and less familiar Scorsese films, including After Hours and The King of Comedy, VEGA INTL. is a sonic expression for the visual journey that takes place in Palomo’s mind it’s both his guidebook and soundtrack to New York’s nighttime.
A decent step away from the first two Neon Indian records (the ones that got him begrudgingly labelled as a pillar of the chillwave pseudo-genre), VEGA INTL.
Night School, the first Neon Indian studio album in four years, out now via Mom + Pop/Transgressive. The record Palomo is referencing is VEGA INTL. “For a record that’s sleazy, it just made the perfect sense to be like, yeah, of course you’re gonna call a phone-sex line to get information about the International Night School,” he says. “I remember my brother and I calling a few of them, but we didn’t have a credit card so we never got past the phone operator and it always started with a ‘Hey there, sexy.'” Coincidentally, that is the same greeting you hear when you call 1-512-643-VEGA. Palomo, or Neon Indian, as he is better known to his fans, is mimicking the commercials he would see on television on Saturday nights growing up. “I’m all alone, just you and me,” sings Alan Palomo in his best sex-hotline falsetto over the phone from his tour bus en route to Minneapolis a few weeks ago.