Neutral Milk Hotel

Members:

• Jeff Mangum
• Scott Spillane
• Jeremy Barnes
• Julian Koster
• Robert Schneider

Neutral Milk Hotel were, at the time of 1996’s debut release ‘On Avery Island’, a vehicle to carry Jeff Mangum’s talent, where anyone who could be tolerated was welcome to inject their input into the more than solid, endearingly low-budget, fuzz-folk record. Bizarre at times, it had a tendency to slip into sprawling and seemingly improvised horn sections, but it’s dark, disturbing and provocative, a vibe that NMH ooze.

1998’s follow up, ‘In the Aeroplane Over The Sea’ is widely heralded as Mangum’s masterpiece and was the product of a solid band base that allowed his imagination to run riot. It retains the remarkable feel of him placing mystical ideas collected from dreams and putting them to record. During his bootleg live release ‘Live At Jittery Joes’ he describes some of the albums content to be based on urgent, recurring dreams he had of a Jewish family during World War II.

The war references dictate subject matters throughout NMH’s creations, and Mangum confesses to being besieged with feelings of sadness and grief after reading Anne Frank’s ‘The Diary Of A Young Girl’ which remains an influence right through ‘…Aeroplane…’, most prominently on ‘Holland 1945.’ The depth of song content is admirable indeed; covering domestic abuse (‘King Of Carrot Flowers Part One’), loneliness, sobriety (‘Song Against Sex’), the past, semen references galore (‘Oh Comely’), a mutant boy surviving in a jar of formaldehyde (‘Two Headed Boy’) and youthful sexual exuberance amongst other topical debates and current affair issues.

Musically, NMH are multi-instrumentalists; the mandatory guitar is prominent, obviously, but less obvious are the obscure use of a zanthithophone, trombones, horn sections and an organ that combine to create a genuinely unique and quirky brand of sporadically sinister, fuzz-folk, punk-rock noises that fuse with Mangum’s songwriting and story-telling talent, rip his gentle tunes to shreds and produces seriously brilliant and warped pop music. It’s prog, in a way.

His vocals exude emotion and personality and can make a room go quiet at there forceful entrance onto a sound landscape; the delivery is remarkable and instantly recognizable and he has depth, proper depth, like an artist, or Billy Childish. Like with an artiste, you listen and look and care, and you want to learn; like all great art he manages to implant vivid images and ideas into your brain that wouldn’t otherwise be there. Pushing the boundaries people, pushing the boundaries; future music people, future music.

I personally had heard nothing like them; if you want comparisons ‘The Decemberists’ gets bandied around but that is to take NMH wildly out of context. There’s none of the theatre and its pretty heavy, serious stuff that doesn’t just engage the ears but the mind, not that I’m dissing ‘The Decemberists’, who are great…I’m just spittin’. ‘The Arcade Fire’ occupy the same breath on occasion, but that’s bollocks. NMH are proper ‘cult classic’, from when that actually meant anything, and to my mind, horribly underrated, but sometimes its better that way. Not everyone 'in the know' picked up on them right away, Pitchfork recently deleted their old review of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea and replaced it (to co-incide with the UK's re-issue), with a big fat 10...

Mangum seems to have disappeared off the face of the earth for the time being but NMH percussionist Jeremy Barnes has taken his two-piece ‘A Hawk and A Hacksaw’ on the road with two top-notch records, check those mothers out.