Go See This Music: Neon Indian

Neon Indian: A Concert Review

The thing about new bands is that they don’t have a lot of material; their sets rarely last more than forty minutes. Needless to say, this is a far cry from the four hour sets that I became accustomed to in my high school years listening to bands like Widespread Panic, Phish, and The String Cheese Incident. Neon Indian is a brand new band. Their debut album was released less than half a year ago and they have only been touring for a couple of months. So, their set was short. Despite this fact, it fucking rocked. There is something magical about seeing a band for the first time, there is something magical about seeing a band that have only played a handful of shows.

Going to the concert I was both unaware of what to expect and totally confident about what I would hear. This was because I knew that the band only had a small repertoire of songs that they would play, they only have one Album; at the same time I had no idea what it would sound like. The Album itself is a washed out, psychedelic wave of music. While the album does have definite rhythm, the guitar and vocals are not the hard hitting, fast paced king of thing that you would expect to be able to dance like a maniac to. But when a band gets on stage, anything can happen.

And man, something definitely happened when Neon Indian stepped onto the stage at Webster Hall on March 5th. Standing front row, and feeling the intense bass certainly helped, but this band shattered my expectation of what I was going to see. Frontman Alan Palomo sang with fervor and strength, guitarist Ronald (Ronnnnyy!!! As dubbed by the girls to our right) Gierhart played both in styles both spacey and grounded. The band came on at about 12:45 and played about forty minutes of psychedelic funk worthy of hipsters and ravers alike. The gem of the night was definitely “Deadbeat Summer” when Palomo ended up on his back writhing around while singing to the sky.

Throughout the show every member of the band thoroughly rocked out and looked incredibly enthused about the packed house at Webster Hall. Each song was jammed out with guitar solos and dance breaks; the concert was something to see. So grab so designer drugs, some ridiculous outfits and Go See This music.