NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL

Neutral Milk Hotel was an American band formed by Jeff Mangum in Ruston, Louisiana, in the late 1980s. They were active until 1998, and then from 2013 to 2015. The band's music featured a deliberately low-quality sound, influenced by indie rock and psychedelic folk. Mangum wrote surreal and opaque lyrics that covered a wide range of topics, including love, spirituality, nostalgia, sex, and loneliness. The band's recordings featured a variety of instruments, including non-traditional instruments like the singing saw and uilleann pipes. Neutral Milk Hotel began as one of Mangum's home recording projects. After graduating high school, Mangum lived as a vagabond and sporadically released music. In 1996, he worked with childhood friend Robert Schneider to record the album On Avery Island, which received positive reviews and sold around 5,000 copies. Mangum recruited musicians Julian Koster, Jeremy Barnes, and Scott Spillane for the band's second album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Its 1998 release received mostly positive, but not laudatory reviews. While on tour, the band's popularity grew through Internet exposure. This negatively affected Mangum, whose mental health began to deteriorate; he did not want to continue touring, and Neutral Milk Hotel went on hiatus shortly after.