NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL

Neutral Milk Hotel was an American band formed by Jeff Mangum in Ruston, Louisiana, in the late 1980s. The band was active until 1998 and then from 2013 to 2015. Their music featured a deliberately low-quality sound influenced by indie rock and psychedelic folk. Mangum wrote surreal and opaque lyrics covering topics such as love, spirituality, nostalgia, sex, and loneliness. The recordings included a variety of instruments, including non-traditional ones like the singing saw and uilleann pipes. Neutral Milk Hotel originated as one of Mangum's home recording projects. After graduating high school, Mangum lived as a vagabond and released music sporadically. In 1996, he collaborated with childhood friend Robert Schneider to record the album On Avery Island, which received positive reviews and sold approximately 5,000 copies. For their second album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Mangum recruited musicians Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes, and Scott Spillane. Released in 1998, the album received mostly positive reviews. The band's popularity increased through Internet exposure while on tour, which contributed to Mangum's deteriorating mental health. He expressed a desire to stop touring, leading to the band's hiatus shortly after.