#34 Neutral Milk Hotel – On Avery Island
Neutral Milk Hotel’s first full length album did not have the impact when it was released that it obviously holds now. Clocking in at around 48 minutes, as the debut album of Jeff Mangum, it’s legacy has grown over the years. Unlike their second album, On Avery Island is mostly recorded by Jeff Mangum and Robert Schneider of the Apples In Stereo, with Schneider also acting as producer.
NMH sounds like every band that I want to be into, a combination of complicated and yet serene lyrics and lo-fi fuzz. Neutral Milk Hotel had wallowed in a level of oblivion for awhile until their records began to get noticed and truly embraced. Take a song such as “Song Against Sex”. If you did not pay attention to the lyrics the first thing you want to do is tap your foot, maybe get up and jump up and down a bit and yet, if you decide to take a gander at the grotesque nature of some of the lyrics, the first thought to me is confusion. Outside of getting too deep into meanings of songs, he paints a very vivid portrait of a sexual encounter that I would expect has never been somehow repeated in the same vision by any other musician or artist. And that says quite a bit when you consider all the songs that have been written over the years about sex. It only gets better. “Someone Is Waiting” still gives me goose bumps and “Naomi” (See Naomi Yang) is the type of woman that I would imagine that several men have known.
On a stroll back from a concert one night I was talking to a young kid who was about 18 about the Elephant 6 show that we just attended. He seemed perturbed by the fact that Jeff Mangum as of this point had not released and or played many live shows (This was mid 2011). I stated that we should just be happy that he gave us two of the most important rock records that have been made in the last 20 years.
Neutral Milk Hotel’s “Naomi” from Naomi Yang on Vimeo.
As simple as it might seem, there has not been anyone that has been able to reproduce Mangum’s stream of consciousness lyrics that hold so much depth within them and I think it goes without question that their other full length album will make this list but the only question is when.