Neutral Milk Hotel were never a band in the traditional sense of the word, more a loose collection of musicians centred around lyricist/singer Jeff Mangum.
Neutral Milk Hotel were never a band in the traditional sense of the word, more a loose collection of musicians centred around lyricist/singer Jeff Mangum.
Why aren’t you listening – Neutral Milk Hotel
I could comfortably write a 25,000 word dissertation on Neutral Milk Hotel, but even this many words could not manage to truly express my feelings about them; the way they move me, the love I have for their sound, the incredibly intellectual yet honest depth of their music, the fact they can reduce me to a sobbing mass of tears whilst I smile jubilantly at just how wonderful the world is. To put it bluntly, Neutral Milk Hotel are without question both the most underrated and most wonderful band ever to grace this earth. No exceptions.
Neutral Milk Hotel no longer exist, although there has been no official announcement to that effect. They played the final gig of a tour with Sparklehorse in London on October 13th 1998 and were never heard of again. The band could easily have faded into obscurity – their albums were difficult to obtain except as expensive imports and they played only a handful of shows outside North America. This goes some way to explaining why Neutral Milk Hotel never received the recognition they deserved during their short career, particularly in Europe. However, since bands such as Arcade Fire and Franz Ferdinand have acknowledged their influence, and since their masterpiece In the Aeroplane over the Sea has recently been reissued on Domino Records, the time is now ripe for them to be discovered by those unfortunate enough to have them absent from their lives.
Neutral Milk Hotel were never a band in the traditional sense of the word, more a loose collection of musicians centred around lyricist/singer Jeff Mangum. The songs are singularly his own; his unique voice and visionary words set to a backdrop of psych-folk guitar and swooning brass and accordion. The additional players were drawn from a group of bands known as the "Elephant Six Collective – Olivia Tremor Control, Elf Power, Apples In Stereo and A Hawk And A Hacksaw. Whilst these bands hint at Neutral Milk Hotel’s sound none possess the near-insane starkness that characterises NMH itself.
Debut album, On Avery Island merely hinted at what this band was able to achieve. More of a sound collage than a set of songs, with buzzing guitars and instruments that sound as though they were recorded under water, the music spins around you like a disorientating dream. And Mangum’s voice! Pitched at such a level it’s hard to believe it’s in tune at certain points, it’s both nasal and joyous and is unusual enough in itself until you listen to the words he is singing: rambling, otherworldly discussions of sex and suicide – "Lost like a bell that’s tipping over/With two cracks along both sides/And I knew the world was over so I took a look outside."
For most bands an album like On Avery Island would be a major achievement, a high point in their career. For Neutral Milk Hotel it is just a footnote to the album that appeared two years later: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Essentially it is a song cycle based around the life, death and reincarnation of Anne Frank, interspersed with more of Mangum’s reflections on sex and death and rounded out by wild instrumentals, once described as being like "a marching band on acid". Having said this, it is probably important to point out that the album is no Pink Floyd-style rock opera: there is no discernable story; the whole album is based around only six or so chords; and it sounds like it was recorded around one microphone in a tin can (in fact it probably was). Similarly, it is no straightforward biography of Anne Frank. It emphasizes the parts of her diary that discuss her developing sexuality, which are often glossed over, and celebrates her as a human being who could have gone on to achieve great things, rather than as being a famous victim of the Holocaust. At various points Mangum suggests that she is only celebrated because she was a victim of the Nazis, rather than because she was a wonderful person – "It’s so sad to see/The world agree/That they’d rather see their faces filled with flies/When I’d love to keep white roses in their eyes." The album is a love song to Anne Frank, a near religious experience, as though Mangum feels a complete affinity with her life. Her life then becomes confused with Mangum’s own experiences and imagination until it is difficult to separate out whose life is whose.
The album opens with the straightforward folk-pop ditty, The King of Carrot Flowers, the first few notes of which could have come from any lo-fi album of the 1990s. Mangum’s lyrics are typically unusual but it is the entrance of the sharp trumpet and accordion (the sounds of which send you shivery and stick in your mind for weeks after) that makes you realise this is like nothing you’ve ever heard before. This all falls apart before Mangum’s voice hits you again and this time it feels as though he’s in the room with you. In fact this is a key feature of the album – the complete lack of production on the album gives it an incredibly intimate feel, with Mangum’s vocals even becoming distorted when he hits his peaks of volume. "I love you Jesus Christ", he wails, somehow managing to sound full of conviction and yet also utterly sarcastic at the same time. Later, during Oh Comely, he holds a note so long you begin to tense up, fearful that the whole song will collapse into a tuneless mess. It doesn’t, it sends you into a trance, and immerses you in Mangum’s manic, kaleidoscopic visions. The instrumental tracks also create a startling array of moods and images – The Fool is a swirling, carnival-esque funeral waltz, whilst Untitled is a mad synthesiser and bagpipe led blast of joy that ends in a vocal crescendo which puts the Arcade Fire to shame.
It is this array of moods that makes the album so stunning. Listening to it is like reading the most heartbreaking novel ever written, in a war-zone, whilst your whole life falls apart and you realise that you’re going to die. And then you realise everything is going to be all right and you want to burst into tears because of it. There is everything from the Freudian surrealism of "Soft silly music was meaningful magical/The movements were wonderful, all in your ovaries", to the profoundly simple and touching "But for now we are young/So let’s lay in the sun/And count every beautiful thing we can see." The range of emotions in it are so complex that it’s difficult to express quite what it does to you, and the feelings are different with each listen. All I am sure of is this: Neutral Milk Hotel are beautiful, complex, profound and utterly perfect.