Neutral Milk Hotel was an American band formed by Jeff Mangum in Ruston, Louisiana, in the late 1980s. They were active until 1998, and then from 2013 to 2015. The band's music featured a deliberately low-quality sound, influenced by indie rock and psychedelic folk. Mangum wrote surreal and opaque lyrics that covered a wide range of topics, including love, spirituality, nostalgia, sex, and loneliness. The band's recordings featured a variety of instruments, including non-traditional instruments like the singing saw and uilleann pipes.
Neutral Milk Hotel began as one of Mangum's home recording projects. After graduating high school, Mangum lived as a vagabond and sporadically released music. In 1996, he worked with childhood friend Robert Schneider to record the album On Avery Island, which received positive reviews and sold around 5,000 copies. Mangum recruited musicians Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes, and Scott Spillane for the band's second album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Its 1998 release received mostly positive, but not laudatory reviews.
While on tour, the band's popularity grew through Internet exposure. This negatively affected Mangum, whose mental health began to deteriorate; he did not want to continue touring, and Neutral Milk Hotel went on hiatus shortly after. During their hiatus, Neutral Milk Hotel gained a cult following, and the critical standing of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea rose tremendously. Several music outlets such as Pitchfork and Blender called In the Aeroplane Over the Sea a landmark album for indie rock and one of the greatest albums of the 1990s. Many indie rock groups such as Arcade Fire and the Decemberists were influenced by Neutral Milk Hotel's eclectic music and earnest lyrics. Neutral Milk Hotel reunited in 2013 and undertook a reunion tour before another hiatus in 2015.
History Early years Neutral Milk Hotel originated in Ruston, Louisiana, in the late 1980s as a home recording project of musician Jeff Mangum. Initially using the name Milk, Mangum made the recordings while in high school. Early Milk recordings, such as Invent Yourself a Shortcake and Beauty, were shared between Mangum and his friends Robert Schneider, Bill Doss, and Will Cullen Hart.; . The four friends branded these homemade cassette tapes with an imaginary record label, Elephant 6, which eventually grew into a loose musical collective.; When Mangum learned of another band called Milk, he changed the name of the project to Neutral Milk Hotel, based on a name Hart suggested.. According to Doss, the name is a non sequitur influenced by the Dada movement, and it does not have meaning.
After graduating from high school, Mangum attended Louisiana Tech University, but dropped out. He moved to Athens, Georgia, and played in a band called Synthetic Flying Machine with Doss and Hart, but left shortly after the band was formed. He then became a vagabond, and lived in cities such as Denver, Los Angeles, and Seattle. Mangum occasionally recorded music during this period, including a 1993 demo album titled Hype City Soundtrack. Schneider says Hype City Soundtrack was a reaction to what Mangum believed was the rampant commercialization of music within large cities. While living in Seattle, Mangum overcame his apprehensiveness about the music industry and released the song "Everything Is" on Cher Doll Records. The song's exposure convinced Mangum to record more music under the name Neutral Milk Hotel. According to Mangum: "The single was a godsend because I was pretty much at the end of my rope with just about everything in my life at that point... I ended up sending a tape to [Nancy Ostrander] at Cher Doll Records and she saved me merely by saying she wanted to do a single."
At the time, Mangum was also a bass guitarist for the Apples in Stereo, a band that Schneider formed while living in Denver. The members of the Apples in Stereo wanted to sign with SpinART Records, and met with their legal representative, Brian McPherson, in Los Angeles.; . McPherson was drawn to Mangum, who was wearing a Shrimper Records T-shirt. After learning that Mangum wrote "Everything Is," a song that McPherson had previously listened to and enjoyed, the two worked out an agreement for McPherson to become Neutral Milk Hotel's representative. McPherson sent copies of "Everything Is" and another song, "Ruby Bulbs," to Merge Records founders Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan. The two liked the music and added Neutral Milk Hotel to their roster.
On Avery Island and expansion to a quartet
Mangum moved to Denver to record the first Neutral Milk Hotel album, On Avery Island. Schneider served as the producer, and the recording sessions lasted from February to May 1995. Although Schneider was interested in an expansive Beatlesque production, he aligned with Mangum's preference for a lo-fi sound, admitting that "at first it was frustrating, but I came to enjoy it. That's how I learned to produce, doing that record, because I totally had to let go of what I thought it should be like." On Avery Island was released in the United States on March 26, 1996, by Merge Records, and in the United Kingdom on September 30, 1996, by Fire Records.; . It sold around 5,000 copies and received positive reviews from critics, who characterized the music as lo-fi pop.Reference for the 5,000 copies sold
References for the positive reviews
. Kurt Wolff of the Houston Chronicle described listening to the music as "a trippy experience," and ultimately called the album "a fresh, exciting standout". The 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." On Avery Island was ranked at number thirty-five on The Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll for 1996.
After the release of On Avery Island, Mangum sought other musicians to tour with. While living in Ruston, Mangum befriended New York musician Julian Koster. They exchanged demo tapes, and Koster joined Neutral Milk Hotel as the bassist. Around this period, Koster received a letter from Chicago drummer Jeremy Barnes, who wrote how he was not meeting the expectations he had set for himself. According to Koster: "Jeremy had written me this really wonderful letter, basically saying he was being led into a far different life than I think Jeremy Barnes was supposed to live ... I think he was sensing that his destiny lay elsewhere." The letter resonated with Koster and Mangum, and they traveled to Chicago to meet him. After a short audition, the two persuaded Barnes to drop out of DePaul University and join the band. The final band member came when Mangum was traveling to New York City to live with Koster. On a stop in Austin, Texas, Mangum met former Rustonian musician Scott Spillane, who was working at a pizza shop. Mangum helped make pizzas during the late-night "drunk rush", after which he convinced Spillane to join the band.
The band members moved to New York City and lived and rehearsed in a house owned by Koster's grandmother. Koster encouraged the band members to play instruments outside their comfort zones. For example, drummer Barnes learned to play the accordion, and Spillane learned how to play the horn parts from On Avery Island, practicing on a two-valve horn for hours every day. On April 28, 1997, Neutral Milk Hotel began a national tour, during which the band members learned to play as a unit. The On Avery Island tour generated enough money for the band members to afford to move to Athens, where a large group of Elephant 6 musicians were living. By the spring of 1997, Mangum had written and demoed nearly every song for a second album. He shared the demos with his bandmates before they moved to Denver to record the album.
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea Neutral Milk Hotel's second album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, was produced by Schneider, and was recorded from July to September 1997. Schneider used new recording techniques to capture Mangum's lo-fi preferences. Mangum liked having a layer of distortion over the music, but Schneider did not use standard effects equipment such as Big Muffs or distortion pedals. Instead, Schneider used heavy compression and placed a Bellari RP-220 tube mic pre-amp close to Mangum's guitar. Schneider then ran the sound through a mixing console, and maxed out the sound on a cassette tape. This process was done for nearly every instrument used on In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Schneider claimed that the nonlinearities of microphone distortion gave the album its unique "warm" quality.
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea was released on February 10, 1998. Merge pressed 5,500 CD and 1,600 vinyl copies, and expected sales to be similar to On Avery Island.; . These initial projections were correct, as the album sold moderately well for the first few months. Critical responses to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea were mostly positive, but not laudatory. Rob Brunner of Entertainment Weekly praised the unique instrumentation and "bouncy pop melodies", but described some of the songs as "lifeless acoustic warblers." Pitchfork M. Christian McDermott also commended the music, which he called a blend of "Sgt. Pepper with early 90s lo-fi" that he found "as catchy as it is frightening." A more tepid review came from Ben Ratliff of Rolling Stone, who felt the rhythms and chord changes were boring, and the heavy layer of distortion sometimes masked the absence of decent melodies. CMJ New Music Monthly ranked In the Aeroplane Over the Sea as the number one album of 1998, and it placed fifteenth in the Pazz & Jop poll for 1998.
To promote the album, Neutral Milk Hotel embarked on a tour of North America and Europe. Musicians John Fernandes and Will Westbrook were brought on as touring members, and were taught how to play the horn parts with Spillane. While on tour, Neutral Milk Hotel gained a reputation for chaotic and physically demanding concerts. Great Lakes member Ben Crum recalled: "It was definitely dangerous. There often seemed to be a very real chance that someone, probably Julian, would get hurt. Jeff was always doing things like picking him up and throwing him into the drums." The band members often could not afford lodgings, and sometimes asked people in the audience if they could spend the night at their house, not realizing the homeowner was, in fact, terrified of them.
Hiatus and cult following According to journalist Luke Winkie, the release of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea inadvertently coincided with the rise of the Internet. In the late 1990s, music journalism websites like Pitchfork became more prevalent, and online message boards increased in popularity. Winkie believes this period was important to exposing Neutral Milk Hotel to a wider audience, and wrote, "The internet has a one-of-a-kind relationship with Neutral Milk Hotel". Their newfound high profile had a negative effect on Mangum, and his mental health began to deteriorate. He constantly told his bandmates he wanted to quit, but never explained why. Some journalists have speculated he became tired of touring and constantly explaining his lyrics to fans; Elephant 6 biographer Adam Clair believes he may have been overwhelmed by the way fans viewed his music, and the high expectations placed upon any subsequent recordings. Regardless of the reason, Mangum came to the conclusion that he could not continue performing, and instead wanted to disappear from the public eye. Instead of telling the other band members of his decision, he simply avoided the topic of new music altogether. This led to the unofficial breakup of Neutral Milk Hotel shortly after the tour. The final Neutral Milk Hotel live performance occurred on October 13, 1998, in London.