Idolator: neutral milk hotel

Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum Gets Together With His Old Pals

Maura Johnston — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 11:15:00 EDT

While I was on a Brooklyn pier watching aerialists and Franz Ferdinand and the beginning of Indie Rock Celebrity Bumpwatching 2008 (sigh) on Saturday night, New York's Knitting Factory was playing host to the Holiday Surprise tour, on which various members of the Elephant 6 collective—including Julian Koster of the Music Tapes/Chocolate USA, Will Hart and Eric Harris of Olivia Tremor Control, and Scott Spillane of seemingly every Elephant 6 band's brass section (as well as the Gerbils)—performed the songs that made me wear down many a CD back in the day. And wouldn't you know it, Jeff Mangum, of Neutral Milk Hotel and an increasingly large legend thanks to the now 10-years-old In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, also showed up to lend his voice to a few of the evening's performances: The opening track to the Olivia Tremor Control's Dusk At Cubist Castle, "The Opera House," is above, and after the jump, a clip of the evening's performance of "I Have Been Floated."

I saw him pop onto the stage for a performance of this song in 2005 and got chills. Kind of sucks, though, that the crowd in this clip seems to not be paying much attention until Mangum gets on stage—the Olivias' catalog deserves much better, don't you think?

Jeff Mangum & Elephant 6 at Knitting Factory 10-11-08 [YouTube]
Elephant 6 at Knitting Factory 10-11-08 [YouTube]

Stars Of The '90s Continue To Align For Shows, Meals, Fever Dreams Of Fans

Maura Johnston — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 15:45:00 EDT

I think we've made enough jokes about the many broken-up bands of yesteryear reuniting just in time to grab their last bit of pre-global-crash money for you to anticipate the punchline even before I get to the end of this sentence. So let's just get to the meat of the post, shall we? News on reunion shows by Hum and Letters to Cleo, as well as some dudes hoping against hope that this year's Coachella will bring Athens' finest out into the desert heat, after the jump.

• Midwestern guitar-rock stalwarts Hum will play a New Year's Eve show at the Double Door, to the delight of Time Out Chicago's Brent DiCrescenzo and a couple of brand managers for Cadillac.

[Time Out Chicago]

• Kay Hanley will take time out from backing up Miley Cyrus to play a few shows with her old band, Letters to Cleo, and maybe if you ask nicely, she'll perform a verse or two from the still utterly playable Josie And The Pussycats soundtrack.

[Pollstar]

• And finally, not that any performers have been announced yet, but Coachella '09 will take place from April 17-19, with the country-tinged Stagecoach Festival taking over the Empire Polo Field in Indio, Calif. Someone's already started the ever-helpful "Neutral Milk Hotel for Coachella '09" thread. I place the likelihood of that happening at about 1%, but you never know.

[Coachella]
[Hum pic via Parasol]

This item about Jeff Mangum's nuptials also ...

mjohnston — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 15:15:38 EST

This item about Jeff Mangum's nuptials also points out that Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, which is definitely in my top 20 albums of all time and maybe even in my top 15, celebrates its tenth anniversary next month. It's probably too much to hope for some sort of tribute album in said anniversary's honor, isn't it? [Glorious Noise]

Idolator Imagines A Brand New Elephant 6

mmatos — Wed, 02 May 2007 15:26:57 EDT

We were so inspired by Jesse Lacey of (yes) Brand New's new cover of (yes) Neutral Milk Hotel that we decided a full-on Elephant 6 covers album by your faaaavorite chart-topping artists was badly needed. A complete wish-list track-list (and an MP3 of Lacey's cover) after the jump.

Timbaland ft. the Hives, "Silver Chain" (originally by the Apples in Stereo)
T-Pain ft. Yung Joc, "Dusk at Cubist Castle" (originally by Olivia Tremor Control)
Diddy ft. Keyshia Cole, "Train Song" (originally by Summer Hymns)
Gym Class Heroes ft. Patrick Stump, "The Sun Is Forever" (originally by Elf Power)
Kellie Pickler, "One Of A Very Few Of A Kind" (originally by Of Montreal)
DJ Khaled featuring Akon, T.I., Rick Ross, Fat Joe, Baby & Lil' Wayne, "Glue" (originally by the Gerbils)
R. Kelly Or Bow Wow (Featuring T.I. & T-Pain), 1st Imaginary Symphony By Vacuum Cleaner" (originally by the Music Tapes)
Fergie, "The Lonely Universe (Explicit Version)" (originally by Circulatory System)
Gwen Stefani, "Sparkly Green Couch (Remix ft. Ludacris)" (originally by Secret Square)
Akon ft. Akon, "When Father Was Away on Business (Remix ft. Akon)" (originally by Major Organ and the Adding Machine)
Nickelback, "High Atop the Silver Branches" originally by Elf Power)
Bon Jovi, "Big Giant" (originally by Pipes You See, Pipes You Don't)
Mark Ronson ft. Lily Allen, Amy Winehouse & S.O.B. (Some Other Bird), "Track 1 from Self-Titled" (originally by the Frosted Ambassador)
Snow Patrol, "Matter Vs. Space" (originally by Beulah)
Hinder, "Live to Tell All" (originally by Dressy Bessy)
Josh Groban & The African Children's Choir, "Sound's Around You (Oh No It Isn't Cried the Little Lord Funkleroy)" (originally by the Sunshine Fix)

Bonus track: Fall Out Boy ft. Ashlee Simpson, "Holland 1945" (originally by Neutral Milk Hotel)

~~Brand New - Oh Comely~~ [MP3, link expired; via Sound Of The City]

The Neutral Milk Hotel "Reunion": Is April Fool's Day Coming A Little Early?

mjohnston — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 13:36:34 EDT

Look, we know that April Fool's Day falling on a Sunday is throwing off a lot of Internet pranksters' schedules, but come on—are we really supposed to believe that the folks at Tiny Mix Tapes don't know how to embed an MP3 player in their site?

Tiny Mix Fest 2007 [Tiny Mix Tapes]

The Vault: Today's Monday, So Neutral Milk Hotel Will Love You Tomorrow

mjohnston — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 10:57:00 EST

Over the weekend, we found the Yo Yo A Go Go compilation in a local bargain bin; it's a double-disc set of performances from the 1994 Yoyo A Go Go Festival in Olympia, Wash., and it has live tracks from the likes of Beck, the Halo Benders, Heavens To Betsy, and Versus. (Not bad for $3.99.) The real find on the comp, though, is "Love You On A Tues.," a little rave-up from Neutral Milk Hotel that sounds like a direct ancestor of On Avery Island's "Song Against Sex":

~~Neutral Milk Hotel - Love You On A Tues.~~ [MP3, link expired]
Neutral Milk Hotel [neutralmilkhotel.net]