Neutral Milk Hotel | Artist
Neutral Milk Hotel was an American indie-folk band formed 1989 in Ruston Louisiana by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Jeff Mangum. In 1996 the band expanded with the addition of Jeremy Barnes (drums, organ, piano), Scott Spillane (trumpet, trombone, flugelhorn, euphonium), and Julian Koster (bass, accordion, saw, banjo, keyboards). They were active until 1998, and then from 2013 to 2015, gaining a cult following, particlarly for their landmark 1998 album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Their music featured a deliberately low-quality sound, influenced by indie rock and psychedelic folk. They began as a home recording project of Jeff Mangum, initially using the name Milk, making recordings while in high school together with friends Robert Schneider, Bill Doss, and Will Cullen Hart. They branded these homemade cassette tapes with an imaginary record label 'Elephant 6' which eventually grew into a loose musical collective. After high school, Mangum attended Louisiana Tech, but dropped out and moved to Athens, Georgia, where he briefly played in a band called Synthetic Flying Machine with Doss and Hart. Mangum then became an itinerant vagabond, living in cities such as Denver, Los Angeles, and Seattle. In 1995 he settled in Denver to record the first Neutral Milk Hotel album On Avery Island, with Robert Schneider as producer. The album was released in the US in March 1996, receiving positive reviews from critics. Kurt Wolff of the Houston Chronicle described listening to the music as "a trippy experience," and British publication NME wrote: "Neutral Milk Hotel can convert miserable-as-sin introspection into folky mantras that bore into your skull like a well-aimed power drill." The band's second album Aeroplane Over the Sea was released in February 1998 on Merge. It sold only moderately well but critical response began to build over time. Rob Brunner of Entertainment Weekly praised the unique instrumentation and "bouncy pop melodies", but described some of the songs as "lifeless acoustic warblers." Pitchfork's M. Christian McDermott called the music a blend of "Sgt. Pepper with early 90s lo-fi" that he found "as catchy as it is frightening", whereas Ben Ratliff of Rolling Stone felt the rhythms and chord changes were boring, and the heavy layer of distortion sometimes masked the absence of decent melodies. The album's critical standing rose tremendously in the years after its release, gaining a cult following. Domino released a reissue in 2005, which was awarded a perfect 10 score by Mark Richardson of Pitchfork. Richardson wrote: "It's a record of images, associations, and threads; no single word describes it so well as the beautiful and overused kaleidoscope." In addition to their two standout studio albums, other recommendations include the 2013 EP Ferris Wheel on Fire, and the comprehensive Neutral Milk Hotel Box Set from 2011, which contains the albums, EP's and several excellent singles. The band's experimental sound incorporates diverse musical influences, including Eastern European choral music, Canterbury Sound, circus music, marching band music, musique concrète, drone music, free jazz, and Tropicália. Their songs typically involve simple chord progressions that Mangum would strum on an acoustic guitar, with more instruments being introduced as the songs progress. The recordings feature a wide range of instruments; including drums and distorted guitars paired with unique instruments like the singing saw and uilleann pipes. Part of Neutral Milk Hotel's legacy is drawn from the general mystique surrounding Jeff Mangum, who is notoriously reclusive. Elephant 6 label biographer Adam Clair notes that Mangum's unexplained absence made him more notable than when he was an active member of the music industry. He actively avoided giving interviews, and as a result, music publications wrote clickbait-esque articles attempting to explain his disappearance with little to no substantive evidence. The band's representative Brian McPherson said: "When the guy sneezes it's on the front page of Pitchfork." Magnum has also released solo work under the name 'Milk', plus he is a member of bands Circulatory System, and The Olivia Tremor Control.
Artist Website: walkingwallofwords.com
Featured Albums: Neutral Milk Hotel
Related Artists: Olivia Tremor Control, Jeff Mangum
