Neon Horse

Crafting a profile of Neon Horse proves challenging, since the group has pledged total silence regarding its lineup and personal histories. This approach differs from Gorillaz or the Residents, acts whose supporting players eventually became common knowledge, and from Jandek, whose seclusion stems simply from a refusal to grant interviews. Instead, it echoes the strategy once employed by the obscure new wave outfit Blanket of Secrecy, whose only album drew extra attention precisely because listeners were left guessing; the record was in fact fronted by Peter Marsh, formerly of the largely forgotten 1970s soft-rock group Easy Street. The band’s own tongue-in-cheek MySpace biography introduces a vocalist called Norman Horse and dismisses the prior activities of the remaining members in assorted little-known Los Angeles bands before the December 2005 formation as too ordinary to recount. Nevertheless, the act’s decision to sign with Tooth and Nail Records, an alternative CCM imprint, hints at ties to Christian rock circles, and online speculation has converged on Mark Solomon, known from Stavesacre and the Crucified, as the figure behind the Norman Horse persona, with some accounts insisting he alone appears beneath heavy makeup and disguise in the clip for the debut single “Cuckoo.” The same commentators attribute the group’s eccentric blend of Eagles of Death Metal-like hard-rock levity and early-’80s new wave revival to producer and multi-instrumentalist Jason Martin of Starflyer 59.