Neutral Milk Hotel

During the 1990s a genius of pop music arose from the musically depressed lands of Louisiana: no, not Britney Spears, but Jeff Mangum, the man behind Neutral Milk Hotel, soon destined to become one of the leaders of the 1990s pop renaissance with Apples In Stereo and Olivia Tremor Control.

Neutral Milk Hotel debuted with three cassettes, Invent Yourself A Shortcake (Elephant 6, 1991), Beauty (Elephant 6, 1992), Hype City (Elephant 6, 1993) and the legendary single Everything Is (Cher Doll, 1994), a catchy refrain set to a simple rhythm.

The fuzzy guitar made people think of a disciple of Jesus And Mary Chain, a perception that the hazy sound on the album On Avery Island (Merge, 1996) did little to change. The songs pivot around memorable hooks, but also flirt with the classics of rock music: the accordion-tinged serenade Naomi with its slow build-up of a spaced-out refrain sounds like a romantic Syd Barrett; You've Passed sounds like a melodic version of the Velvet Underground; Someone Is Waiting is like a hysterical version of the Rolling Stones' She's like a Rainbow with a distorted street-organ finale; the fuzz-infested Where You'll Find Me Now is like a mournful yodeling country singer intoning a bolero a` la White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane) and best is perhaps the stately acid-rock anthem Gardenhead/ Leave Me Alone (with the lyrics "to take on the world at all angles requires a strength I can't use"). The songs are also notable for quirky arrangements a` la Brian Wilson and VanDyke Parks (trombone, xylophone, organ), halfway between the Salvation Army and classical music: the silly march-like folk-rock ditty Song Against Sex peaks with a crescendo of a charming horn fanfare; April 8th is a prayer-like dirge over an ominous rumble; and the instrumentals (the delicately funereal Avery Island / April 1st and the psychedelic-electronic merry-go-round Marching Theme) are spiced with eccentric timbres. The 14-minute Pree-Sisters Swallowing a Donkey's Eye opens with heavy guitar distortion a` la Neil Young leading to a loop of dense musique concrete which dissolves in a nebula of dreamy drones roamed by a dissonant carillon and ends with fading pulsating electronic waves. Each detail feels a little naive, but the whole feels like a tour de force.

A real band accompanied Mangum on In the Aeroplane Over The Sea (Merge, 1998), but at the same time the dominating instrument is now the acoustic guitar. The only difference is to create a magical contradiction: a breathless, emotional rollercoaster ride of tunes that are not very catchy and lyrics that are innuendos rather than messages delivered by a whining idiosyncratic singer who is as exciting as a hawker and misses every other note, and is obsessed with Anne Frank and Jesus, with no skills in either songcraft or musicianship, over slightly thrashy strummed acoustic guitar while his band plays lo-fi folk-rock and a retired producer from the 1960s applies sloppy arrangements. It's a sublimely flawed album that nonetheless speaks spirals of melancholy. The opener, The King Of Carrot Flowers Pt One, is misleading: a simple catchy ditty halfway between Tommy Roe's bubble-pop and Buddy Holly's brainy verve. The King Of Carrot Flowers Pts Two & Three widens the horizon to exotic folk chanting, rousing mariachi saxophone and a punk-rock litany. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea returns to innocence with a rigmarole that blends Social Distortion's Story of my Life with the romantic teen idols of the 1960s and with clownish arrangements (theremin, horns). Standout Holland 1945, the core of his Anne Frank tribute, is a breezy singalong that conflates Jonathan Richman's childish exuberance and R.E.M.'s It's the End of the World. Another standout of this disorienting style is Ghost, which begins as poppy psych-rock but then syncopated pulsing drumming and a horn fanfare, coupled with an exotic lament, make it sound like a sober David Peel fronting a ramshackle street band. The emotional zenith is perhaps the two songs for only ranting/wailing and acoustic guitar: the riffs of Two-Headed Boy nonetheless evoke a slower version of The Who's Tommy, while the desperate eight-minute spiritual self-therapy of Oh Comely is a test of endurance rather than a tour de force. The instrumentals are humble but show much bigger potential: the funereal march The Fool and especially the quaint acid-jig with bagpipes The Penny Arcade in California. The album became a national anthem of the indie community of the era, just before the end. The emperor had no clothes, but that was the whole point.

Neutral Milk Hotel's multi-instrumentalist Julian Koster released the single Please Hear Mr Flight Control (Elephant 6, 1998) and the album First Imaginary Symphony For Nomad (Merge, 1999) under the moniker Music Tapes, an album which is a sort of gigantic, mad collage in the vein of the Fugs' Virgin Forest with notable parts for singing saw and bowed banjo.

Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel and Julian Koster ofthe Music Tapes assembled a supergroup of mermbers of Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, and Of Montreal to record Major Organ and the Adding Machine (2001).

After Second Imaginary Symphony For Cloudmaking (2002), basically a soundtrack to accompany a spoken-word narrative, Koster delivered another cartoonish survey of a whole musical century, Music Tapes for Clouds & Tornadoes (Merge, 2008), a work that now turned sound quality into a co-protagonist by recording all the songs on vintage equipment of yore. The overture, Saw Pingpong and Orchestra, is a drunken singalong that sounds like an orchestral version of the Holy Modal Rounders. No less demented is Tornado Longing For Freedom, a banjo-driven lament that sounds like an insult to yodeling country singers. A bit more sober are Majesty and especially The Minister Of Longitude, the sort of street fanfares with catchy refrains that Koster excels at. The accordion-derailed litany Freeing Song By Reindeer and the pretentious aria Cumulonimbus (Magnetic Tape For Clouds) with banjo and cello sound like parodies of moronic Beatles songs. Somehow Koster decides to devote six full minutes (an eternity by his standards) to the Hawaian-tinged requiem Song For Oceans Falling, replete with trumpet and theremin adagio. Koster does not invest enough time into the arrangements although the jovial instrumentals Nimbus Stratus Cirrus (Mr. Piano's Majestic Haircut) and In An Ice Palace display a rare genius.

Neutral Milk Hotel's drummer Jeremy Barnes formed Bablicon.

Live At Jittery Joes (2001 - Orange Twin, 2005) was a Jeff Mangum solo acoustic live set.

A Hawk And A Hacksaw is the solo project of Neutral Milk Hotel's drummer Jeremy Barnes, originally from New Mexico and now resident in Britain. A Hawk And A Hacksaw (2004) and Darkness At Noon (Leaf, 2005), with the eight-minute Laughter In The Dark, are devoted to ethnic folk with the kind of drunk attitude that Tom Waits could concoct. After relocating back to New Mexico, Barnes recorded The Way The Wind Blows (Leaf, 2006), that featured klezmer violinist Heather Trost, a collection that continued the pan-ethnic program with merely a more profound tone. The chamber instrumental The Way The Wind Blows pivots on a touching violin and accordion melody. Fernando's Giampari is an exuberant post-modernist fantasia on klezmer and assorted folk dance music. Other pieces are more directly related to this or that folk tradition. Notably, the six-minute In The River for horns, organ, violin and accordion sounds like a Slavic funeral march. The musicianship even increased and the tempos were even more frantic on Deliverance (Leaf, 2009), for example in Kertesz.

The Music Tapes' member Julian Koster played Christmas carols on a saw: The Singing Saw at Christmastime (Merge, 2008).

Jeremy Barnes and Heather Trost further expanded the scope and sophistication of their pan-ethnic research on A Hawk And A Hacksaw's Cervantine (LM Duplication, 2011) performed by an eight-piece ensemble whose arsenal of instruments (accordion, cymbal, violin, viola, bouzouki, trumpet, flugelhorn, tuba, euphonium, dumbek, riq, guitar, cello, dobro, clarinet, saxophone and percussion) laid the foundations for an even wilder cauldron of world-music, notably the rousing eight-minute No Rest for the Wicked. A stronger Mexican influence now complemented their passion for the Balkans. You Have Already Gone To The Other World (2013) was conceived as the soundtrack for Sergei Parajanov's film "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors" (1964).