The theme of the tragically aged partier is a classic one in American pop culture, from Jimmy Buffet’s “Margaritaville,” and Harmony Korine’s Beach Bum, to our obsession with “where are they now” documentaries. Alan Palomo tells this story on his 2023 retro synth LP World of Hassle, his first solo album away from his band Neon Indian. World of Hassle is a bildungsroman or a memoir, which walks the line between satire of and homage to ‘80s club music. As the album’s speaker moves from naive youth to hard partier to old and beaten tragic figure, the listener is swept up in the luxuriant, enticing world of synth jazz.
Listening to World of Hassle transports you to ‘80s Miami, wandering through clubs and dancing among beautiful, hairy chested regulars. In an interview with National Public Radio (NPR), Palomo talked about the retro philosophy behind creating World of Hassle saying: “It’s such a tried and true ’80s male rock cliche to leave your band in your mid-30s in a crisis, like, make a jazz record.” Palomo’s protagonist mirrors Palomo, who left Neon Indian at 34 to record the LP. The ‘80s male rockstar character shines through in the bildungsroman he weaves, just as much as in the jazz instrumentals and poppy synths themselves.
The LP’s opening track, “The Wailing Mall,” introduces the album’s protagonist as a child lost in the mall. The song presents Palomo’s strongest songwriting on the record. It’s a funny and horrifying scene of a young boy infinitely trapped in a suburban mall. Resigned to never being found, he darkly croons, “So I guess I’m here to stay.” The song is full of surreal word play. The speaker transitions from the mundane horror of a child lost in the mall to guerrilla revolutionaries murdered in the Rainforest Cafe. The food court sentences him to life serving others a buffet. The political play of “The Wailing Mall” is, like the rest of the album, deeply entrenched in the ‘80s (Che Guevara makes an appearance). Palomo’s dark humor sets up a shadowy undercurrent for the rest of the album, evoking the racism he grew up with and his detachment from white America.
“The Wailing Mall” introduces its protagonist as an innocent, easily seduced young man as he enters the second act of the album. In the next few songs, Palomo is swept up into a new world of sex and travel. The album’s second track, “Meurtriére” featuring Jazz singer Flore Benguigui, is a twisted psychosexual thriller, obscured by smooth synth leads and Benguigui’s lighthearted French vocals.
Palomo struggles to reconcile his criticism of ‘80s club pop music with the poppy sound that World of Hassle often takes on unironically. The third track, “La Madrileña,” for example, is a classic jazzy love song sung in Spanish to Miranda la Madrileña. It’s fun, but loses some of the rich layers and gut feelings of its preceding songs as it borders on repetitive muzak. This is a problem Palomo will struggle with for the rest of the album.
From these smitten songs, Palomo’s protagonist becomes more cynical. The innocence of his young dalliances takes on a less naive, more mature tone. “Nudista Mundial ‘89,” which features sleaze aficionado Mac DeMarco, begins this chapter: an indulgent tourist trip to Ibiza with DeMarco punctuated by pornographic moans of “Oh yeah!”; the ballad of a fallen rock star named Mickey Milan; tales of boring, drug ridden club nights in “Stay-At-Home DJ” and “Club People.” These songs are undeniably exciting, set to dazzling percussion and synth keys along the lines of Silk Sonic’s An Evening With Silk Sonic. It’s here that Palomo really succeeds in his portrayal of the ‘80s pop scene. His characters are transfixed by the spectacle of the scene, but Mickey Milan’s pathetic story and the tiredness of “Stay-At-Home DJ” foreshadow the short lifespan of the ‘80s pop scene, which quietly died out at the turn of the decade.
Palomo is uniquely able to make ‘80s pop nostalgically alluring and disgustingly blase. World of Hassle is the creation of our cultural obsession with nostalgia. Much of this nostalgia seeks to glorify the past, even in its unhealthy aspects. Palomo, however, is able to acknowledge the enjoyment of the era while quietly pointing out that it wasn’t as great as we want it to be. “Club People” and “Stay-At-Home DJ” both use repetitive chorus lines and pop percussion to lull you into dancing along, but push it just far enough that you start to wonder whether it still means anything. This pushing effect is the strongest critical aspect of Palomo’s satirical project. As the synths repeat nearly ad nauseum, the songs begin losing their novel excitement and the listener begins to question whether the songs, and the scene they’re imitating matter at all.
The final section of the album begins with the quiet instrumental piece “Alibi for Petra,” which slows the album down, introducing the decline of the protagonist’s partying as they get too old for the constant sex and drug use.
Next, mournful saxophone accompanies Palomo’s haunting “Nobody’s Woman,” which follows two nobodies through the night; the central party-figure of the LP has fallen out of glamor. A sense of exhaustion floods the song as Palomo smoothly sings “I’m nobody” over and over again. Existential dread enters the speaker’s psyche in “Is There Nightlife After Death?” as he wonders whether his year of nightlife actually meant anything in the grand scheme of things. “Big Night of Heartache,” the penultimate vocal track, tells a tragic fall from the dreamlike world of the first three quarters of the album. In it, he goes on a date and resigns himself to pointless heartbreak and loneliness.
These final tracks are all accompanied by a jazzier, less synthesized set of instrumentals that rely heavily on saxophone and flute with strikingly beautiful guitar riffs. Towards the middle of the album, some of Palomo’s instrumentals get caught in a rut, but he breaks out here and introduces a whole new range of complex and rich sounds.
In the final vocal track, “The Island Years,” we’re given the conclusion of the record-long arc. The speaker is “swept away out on the isle.” He’s abandoned his agency and left himself at the whim of the universe. It’s really here that you can see the full tapestry that World of Hassle truly is.
The greatest strength, and arguably the weakness, of the World of Hassle is the relationship it builds between nostalgia and criticism, as well as satire and homage. Tracks like “The Wailing Mall” and “Nudista Mundial ‘89” pair the two exceedingly well, portraying a nuanced acknowledgment of the fun indulgence of the era, and a rejection of nostalgia’s over-simplification. It is at times very smart, and always fun, but its critique often dissolves when Palomo himself gets caught up in the narcotic of nostalgia.
Tate McFadden is the Arts and Culture Editor and Opinion Editor for The Triton.