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Neon Indian: Mind Ctrl: Psychic Chasms Possessed

FADER/Static Tongues

Call it chillwave, glo-fi or whatever hipster sobriquet feels right, but one thing’s for sure: Alan Palomo’s music as Neon Indian is different than your usual indie buzz rock. Taken at face value, Psychic Chasms (released in 2009 and repackaged here in a deluxe edition) is an oddball pop confection that recalls Todd Rundgren and Gary Wright as much as it does Steely Dan. If you dig deeper, then the points of reference readily fizzle with each neo-psychedelic ectoplasm of sound. “Deadbeat Summer” and the adolescent ditty “Should Have Taken Acid with You” laud the slacker aesthetic, but that label is also deceptive: Palomo has a producer’s craft for stacking and compressing vocals, guitars, vintage synths and drum machines. Live, the band is a promising force still in its infancy. Accompanied by nine remixes from peers like Toro y Moi, Javelin and Yacht (the best being Anoraak’s techno-ish morph of the title cut), Palomo’s willfully weird little album has cult classic potential. In a frothing sea of pretenders and imitators, that’s saying a lot.