TRAPPED ON AVERY ISLAND: Neutral Milky Ephemera

Those of you who know me in real-life will hopefully need no reminder that, however derailed and diversified my music taste may have become in recent years, I am still an unapologetic devotee of the mid-90s mystery cult known to indie bores, lovers of eccentric song-craft and anguished teenage depressives the world over by the name – oft whispered, stammered or shrieked I suspect - of Neutral Milk Hotel.

At which point I bid farewell to those of you reflexively growling, and extend a warm welcome to any of the massed legions of Mangum-ites who happen to have turned this post up on a search-engine or something.

Having played both “On Avery Island” and “In An Aeroplane Over The Sea” to the point of absolute oblivion a few years ago, I’ve actually let my NMH fixation subside a bit over the past 18 months, simply due to the lack of any further stuff to listen to.

Given the obsessive interest which has slowly grown up around this band since they ceased operation, there is inevitably a mountain of Jeff Mangum ephemera flying around on file-sharing networks and the like, but from my experience much of it is disappointing; a mixture of pointless lo-fi noise experiments taken from NMH’s early self-released cassettes (see the detailed discography here) and inferior demo/live versions of already released songs.

But nonetheless, there are still a fair few golden, cosmic song-needles to be found in the haystack of garble (if you will), and the reason for writing this post is that – probably a few years after everybody else – I’ve finally stumbled across this rather amazing page, which essentially compiles ALL of the worthwhile extra-curricular NMH material as quick, free Mp3 downloads, along with an additional bunch of live bootlegs, videos etc.

What joy! What gratitude I owe to the person who put that humble site together!

Since the downloads are freely available anyway, I’m assuming no one will mind if I repost a few of my favourites for you here.

Of primary interest to those whose connection to the band lies solely within the powerful and painful songs that comprise “In An Aeroplane..” are a few rare recordings of songs Mangum was working out during/post “Aeroplane”, ‘Little Birds’ and ‘Ferris Wheel on Fire’. The former in particular is a beautiful song, but it makes for difficult listening and is perhaps even more cracked and harrowing than the troubling dirges on the second half of “Aeroplane”, hinting at the kind of mental state that led Mangum to retreat from the music world shortly thereafter.

More immediately to my liking are some of the earlier songs, so here are a couple of those. Firstly a solo acoustic version of “Dream Girl”, one of the great lost NMH songs, and (I believe) quite an early Mangum composition which sets the tone for both of his subsequent albums. Then there’s “Glue”, a bit of an oddity which I’ve had knocking around on my hard-drive since a brief downloading spree a couple of years ago. Only now do I learn though that it’s actually a song written by NMH and Olivia Tremor Control horn-player Scott Spillane for his own band, Gerbil. It’s a great lo-fi recording of a great song, betraying a heavy Mangum influence. Although I still don’t know where it originated or who the hell that guy with the Jad Fair-like voice rambling away at the end of it is – I’m pretty sure it’s not Jeff, and Spillane certainly doesn’t look like the kind of guy who’d speak with such a squeaky, comedic accent… any Elephant 6 fanatics out there want to set me straight?

Mp3 > Neutral Milk Hotel - Dream Girl

Mp3 > Gerbil / Neutral Milk Hotel – Glue

One of my favourite things on the downloads page is what shall be known for posterity as ‘Unreleased Demo Tape # 2’, a bunch of songs recorded by Jeff Mangum on 4-track in 1993. The first track on the tape, ‘Everything is..’, went on the become the A-side of the first official Neutral Milk Hotel single (released on Cher Doll records in 1994), and ‘April 8th’ was re-recorded for “Avery Island”, but the rest of the songs on the tape are complete unknowns that it seems Jeff never bothered reviving or playing live. Which is a shame, because some of them are really great! A world away from the cathartic and sometimes overwrought side of NMH that eventually became “Aeroplane..”, the songs on this demo are so, well, FUN, I suppose: breezy, fuzzy, homemade psychedelic pop of the best possible kind. They utilise a more conventional ‘rock’ blueprint than most later NMH material, in terms of both sound and structure, with Jeff laying down straight-up, rudimentary drumbeats, overlaid with sweet fuzz guitar chug and some hesitant (tho actually kinda awesome) lead lines and soloing. The vocals are quite quiet and mannered, as if Jeff had neither the confidence nor inclination to dredge up the kind of ear-splitting hollers he became known for later (either that or he was trying not to wake the neighbours), but his way with a great melody and a beautiful, reality-fracturing lyric is already on full display, making these songs essential listening for anyone who has ever engaged with the laidback cosmic pop beauty of NMH’s world, as opposed to just the emotional hysterics and quirky Victoriana. (“Life is Never-Ending” is a particularly fine song.)

Mp3 > Neutral Milk Hotel - Jennifer

Mp3 > Neutral Milk Hotel - Life Is Never-Ending

This demo tape serves to remind me why I fell in love with Neutral Milk Hotel in the first place. In fact, it takes me right back to when I first started getting into “On Avery Island”, all that time ago. I’d just bought myself a guitar, having never previously played a note, and I had a vague yet strangely specific idea of the kind of music I wanted to make, the kind of music that I thought should exist but didn’t… a kind of noisy, folky, punky, psychey grab-bag of weirdness with awesome totally-cosmic-yet-still-grounded-and-about-stuff lyrics. A few listens to ‘Song Against Sex’ and ‘Naomi’, and it became abundantly clear that these guys had beat me to it and done it better than I ever could, sending me back to the drawing board. (Not that that stopped the first few attempts at songs I fumbled together from being pale and obvious NMH rip-offs.)

Now it’s odd that this demo tape should land in my lap four or five years later just as I’m finally getting stuck into working out some solo, song-based home recordings (yeah, I know, I’m a slow learner), and once again it strikes me as sounding like a really good example of exactly the kind of thing I want to make. The difference being that this time it almost sounds like something I COULD conceivably make…. if I were a far more gifted song-writer and natural musician.

The other demo tape (#1) is also worth a listen, but on the whole more of an obsessives-only affair, featuring sketches for some potentially startling songs that never saw the light of day, although they’re very much works in progress, and the poor recording quality and minimal instrumentation don’t do them any favours.

The highlight of demo tape #1 is a song called ‘Bucket’, which I have deliberately saved until last, because it’s one of my favourites. There is a ‘properly’ recorded version of the song floating around (I suspect it may be an outtake from one of the albums) which replaces the wobbly keyboard of the demo with droning, distorted guitar, but the results are pretty charmless and it’s easy to see why it was never selected for release. The more genuine feeling and melodic grace of the demo win hands down, despite its no-fi origins.

Mp3 > Neutral Milk Hotel - Bucket (demo)

Apologies for all the music-geek talk in this post, but I fear I would only end up sounding like an idiot if I tried to put into words the simple, transparent joy of understanding that the best Neutral Milk Hotel songs can bring me.

I guess it’s kind of like what Richard Meltzer was getting at, when he said that most modern music fails because it’s simply content to bang around at point ‘A’ for a bit and go home. He said he prefers listening to jazz, because jazz guys work a bit harder and at least guarantee you a pretty decent A and B and some shots at C and D. But the power of rock n’ roll when it was new and at it’s best, he says, was it’s capacity to zoom straight from A to Z in a few seconds, without even knowing it was doing it.

So with that in mind, I would particularly implore NMH unbelievers to listen to some of these tunes and to bear witness to some guy alone in his bedroom in Athens, Georgia 14 years ago, running down the alphabet in a heartbeat.