“And this is the room /one afternoon I knew I could love you” – King of Carrot Flowers Part 1
Jeff Magnum, main musician for long-dead indie rock legends NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL, has fans slavering at the news of a reunion. The line up will be Magnum, Jeremy Barnes, Scott Spillane and Julian Koster. Members of the 1990s ELEPHANT 6 RECORDS COLLECTIVE, which included bands like THE APPLES IN STEREO, OLIVIA TREMOR CONTROL, OF MONTREAL and San Francisco’s own BEULAH, NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL broke up in 1999. This was shortly after releasing the brilliant and groundbreaking 1998 In An Aeroplane Over the Sea. This album is need, bad acid and sexual yearning personified in lo-fi fuzz folk, with accordions and horns, all overlaid with Magnum’s distinct, pleading voice.
Songs (which all bleed into each other, there aren’t really tracks) begin with subtle keys or harpsichord and crescendo in rip-roaring drums and thrashing guitars, with lyrics that can only be described as obtuse. Remember King of Carrot Flowers 2 & 3 begins with “I looooove you Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ I loooove you” before being overwhelmed by fuzzed out guitars. NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL combined folk and noise rock with elements of spoken word, to create a sonically psychedelic and random universe that matched Magnum’s own mental instabilities. Being from rural Louisiana (a town called Ruston) doesn’t make you crazy, but it puts you in a pantheon of famous Southern musicians who bring brilliance with the insanity. Just check out the cryptic and garbled note on the band’s website, accompanying the tour announcement:
“and of water course womb rume is a wandering the welkin woman whose fune caul is all umbilical cord code that comes equipped with read volve vît curtains that čun seel my văl én tich radio reason in remembrance of mademoiselle gabrielle and her wone tym pad lock of burd language as it borders on twin tolk the wolk king wall of woolpack pigeons pointing to the fly blind readers riddle and his rian boh”
If that makes sense to you, sell your kidney for tickets and catch NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL at the following places. Please note the Asheville, North Carolina show features famed outsider musical savant Daniel Johnston.
October 22-23 USA – Athens, Georgia (with Elf Power and the Half Japanese)
October 25 – USA -Asheville, North Carolina
November 28 – Taipei, Taiwan
December 1 – Tokyo Japan
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