Riding leisurely over the chillwaves into public consciousness this week comes Era Extraña, the sophomore effort from Neon Indian a.k.a. Alan Palomo. Sonically this album, which officially releases on the 13th, follows 2009’s Psychic Chasms along what seems to be the logical progression of Neon Indian given the debut’s success. A few tracks on the upcoming album, like the infectious “Polish Girl” and “Future Sick,” more readily recall the vaguely cheeky pep of Alan Palomo’s debut album under the NI name, but Era Extraña seems to mark a richening of Neon Indian’s sound, perhaps as a result of its being released under Alan Palomo’s own Static Tongues label. Where this is most marked is in an overall thickened texture, which is still highly reliant on nostalgic analog synths, but emerges here as streamlined, but also darker, deeper—woven together with an eye to something more than just a side project.

At its best Era Extraña completely surrounds with 100-foot walls of analog glory, in whose striations can be heard scintillating fragments of Bowie and Joy Division, the Jesus and Mary Chain as well as Streets of Rage – though to speculate about Palomo’s influences is like throwing pebbles into a bottomless pit. “Blindside Kiss” drips with Psychocandy reverb, the verse laden with fuzz guitar, as if the empty space of the JAMC’s echo-chamber ballads were filled in with 16-bit arabesque. The grittiness of this track carries over into “Hex Girlfriend” and, to a lesser extent. “Halogen (I Could Be a Shadow)” promises high replay value, for better or worse.

More than before, Era Extraña exhibits Palomo’s pop sensibility, or at the very least his sensibility for unapologetically catchy hooks. The kind that make you want to twirl. The melodies are intuitive, and Palomo delivers them effortlessly with just the right amount of locomotion, his timing halfway between Ian Curtis and electrofried artifacts from an early-nineties Guided By Voices deviation. When Palomo significantly slows the tempo—this is chillwave, after all—it is with a sedated wall-of-sound ballad like “Fall Out” or the album’s title track, surreal grooves that channel equally B-Sides from both Phil Spector and Teena Marie.

All in all, Neon Indian seems to have hit its mark on this release, channeling all the proper nostalgia without oversaturating us in blips and bleeps. As usual, Palomo’s detached delivery belies a kind of mania lying dormant just beneath the surface, and it is this tacit self-awareness (“take me from these arcade blues / I don’t know what to do”) that keeps the album from feeling bogged down.

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