Neutral Milk Hotel

Neutral Milk Hotel is an American indie rock group from Ruston, United States. It forms in 1989 as a recording project for singer, guitarist and songwriter Jeff Mangum, and becomes associated with the Elephant 6 Collective, based in Athens, Georgia. The group’s membership includes Mangum, Jeremy Barnes, Scott Spillane and Julian Koster. Its listed labels include NMH Records, and its sound is associated with avant-folk, folk rock, indie folk, indie rock, lo-fi and neo-psychedelia.

History

The group begins as Mangum’s solo recording project in Ruston, Louisiana, where he makes a series of early demo cassettes. These include Invent Yourself a Shortcake from 1991, Beauty from 1992 and Hype City Soundtrack from 1993, along with other unnamed demos from the same period. The early recordings mix songs with sound collage, tape experiments and other loose recording ideas.

Before recording under the Neutral Milk Hotel name, Mangum also makes a cassette under the name Milk, titled Pygmie Barn in E Minor. He is also a member of The Olivia Tremor Control, alongside Will Cullen Hart and Bill Doss, and appears on their first release, California Demise 7".

Early releases

The first formal Neutral Milk Hotel release is the 7-inch Everything Is, recorded while Mangum is in Seattle and issued in 1994 on Cher Doll Records. The first full album, On Avery Island, follows in 1996 on Merge Records. It is recorded mainly in Denver with backing from Robert Schneider of the Apples in Stereo, Rick Benjamin of the Perry Weissman Three and Lisa Janssen of Secret Square.

After On Avery Island, Neutral Milk Hotel becomes a more fixed band, with Julian Koster, Scott Spillane and Jeremy Barnes joining Mangum. The group is then based in New York before moving to Athens, Georgia, where many of Mangum’s friends settle and the Elephant 6 network takes shape more fully.

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

The band records its second album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, in Denver and releases it in 1998. It becomes the group’s best-known recording and is widely regarded as a cult classic. The album is shaped around themes connected to Anne Frank and other overwhelming historical tragedy, and Mangum describes some of its songs in live performance as arising from recurring dreams about a European family in the 1940s.

The record is noted for its unusual instrumentation and Mangum’s intense, direct lyrics. Although it receives little mainstream attention at first, it gains a strong reputation in indie music circles and sells more than 100,000 copies according to Merge Records.

Hiatus and later activity

Following the release of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and a year of constant touring, the group goes on hiatus and turns down further show offers, including a support slot for R.E.M. The band becomes inactive after 1998, and later plays a reunion tour in 2013, followed by sporadic concerts until going on indefinite hiatus in mid-2015.

There are also several related releases and projects during the hiatus. Orange Twin reissues Everything Is with bonus tracks and releases Live at Jittery Joe’s, a bootleg recording of a 1997 coffee-house show in Athens. Orange Twin also issues Orange Twin Field Works, Vol. 1, a field recording of a Bulgarian folk festival made by Mangum, in 2001. Another Orange Twin release, The Major Organ and the Adding Machine, features Mangum with Julian Koster, Kevin Barnes, Andrew Reiger, Will Cullen Hart and Eric Harris.

Mangum also plays drums on the first Circulatory System album. Outside Neutral Milk Hotel, the members continue in other projects: Julian Koster records as The Music Tapes, Scott Spillane as The Gerbils, and Jeremy Barnes as A Hawk & A Hacksaw, Bablicon and Marta Tennae.

Legacy

The group’s work remains closely associated with the Elephant 6 Collective and with later indie acts that cite it as an influence, including Franz Ferdinand and The Arcade Fire. A UK reissue of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea appears in 2005 on Domino Records.