Like their Elephant 6 labelmates and kindred spirits Olivia Tremor Control's Music From the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle, Neutral Milk Hotel's debut, On Avery Island, is an inscrutable concept album, a chronicle of an insular world told in a remarkably universal language. A fuzzy masterpiece of experimental lo-fi recording, the album wraps its ragged pop songs in ribbons of loops, marching-band squawks, and Casio noodling; the opener, "Song Against Sex," is as much a manifesto as a kickoff, a self-propelled marvel hopped up on rapid-fire wordplay and a stunningly ramshackle melody punctuated by bloated trombone moans. Throughout the record, Jeff Mangum's wheels threaten to fly off at any time -- his songs are cryptic and crazed, his ideas fast and furious, and together they force the home-recording concept out of the basement and into a brave new world.
I'm sorry for another *NMH* post. I can't help it. And anyhow, this song is great. But then again, so are all the other ones. I'd include Holland 1945 and Oh, Comely if I could. Yeesh.Gardenhead / Leave Me AloneThere are beads that wrap Around your knees that crackle into the dark,Like a walk in the park like a hole in your head,Like the feeling you get when you realize you're dead.This ti...
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ok, so i know it's a character flaw, but i listen to my mp3 player at work anytime i'm not actually doing work. that includes when i'm peeing. ok, i know it's weird.but isn't it WEIRDER when you're minding your own business, peeing in the bathroom at work, listening to *the mountain goats* and sort of tapping your foot, and all of a sudden the side of the bathroom stall is shaking? and you t...
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First off-yes, I'm mildly obsessed with embedding youtube content in my MOG. Does this make me a bad person? Probably...but to get to the point, I was listening to On Avery Island this morning, and I realized something. I listen to this far more these days than In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Now, I don't think that the former is a better album than the latter, or that "better" is even a tag tha...
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I'm sorry for another *NMH* post. I can't help it. And anyhow, this song is great. But then again, so are all the other ones. I'd include Holland 1945 and Oh, Comely if I could. Yeesh.Gardenhead / Leave Me AloneThere are beads that wrap Around your knees that crackle into the dark,Like a walk in the park like a hole in your head,Like the feeling you get when you realize you're dead.This ti...
More >
ok, so i know it's a character flaw, but i listen to my mp3 player at work anytime i'm not actually doing work. that includes when i'm peeing. ok, i know it's weird.but isn't it WEIRDER when you're minding your own business, peeing in the bathroom at work, listening to *the mountain goats* and sort of tapping your foot, and all of a sudden the side of the bathroom stall is shaking? and you t...
More >
First off-yes, I'm mildly obsessed with embedding youtube content in my MOG. Does this make me a bad person? Probably...but to get to the point, I was listening to On Avery Island this morning, and I realized something. I listen to this far more these days than In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Now, I don't think that the former is a better album than the latter, or that "better" is even a tag tha...
More >
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 "On Avery Island")
