Neutral Milk Hotel
Everything Is EP
[Orange Twin; 1995; r:2001]
Rating: 6.0
"How about not hitting it, but kind of doing it with your hand? Real nice,
real good. Here we go. We need to make it... yeah, let's... here we go. Okay,
Chuck's rolling. Chuck's rolling. Chuck... I'd like to do another one, if we
can. Frankie, I think you should go back and forth, instead of trying to... the
harder you throw them, the worse it sounds. Now, now we're starting to make
more sense. Beautiful, beautiful... Beautiful. Now it sounds like jewelry.
Here we go. Now we're starting to really sound... that's beautiful, here we
go. Also, make sure that you're in the rhythm, too, here we go. It's a little
bit fast. Let's... I wanna... let me try to establish it. One, two, one, two,
three, go. Okay, now here's the... here's the thing. Frankie? Again, please.
Here we go, okay? Everybody ready? Alright, here goes... Okay, fine. Now
to the top. This time, let... no... Okay, here we go. Sounds great. Okay, let
me... I think it's just a little bit fast. Can I establish another rhythm? Uh,
make it, uh... one. One, two, one, two, three..."
-- Brian Wilson, 1966, during the recording of Smile
This is always how it ends up for perfectionist geniuses. While modern day
recording techniques have cleaned up a lot of the extraneous human element,
and actual error on tape has gone the way of the dodo, there can never really
be a final, best take of music for people like Brian Wilson. The good part
about this is that listeners are treated to ever-expanding and evolving displays
of inspired performance. When you follow the lineage of Beach Boys albums up
to Smile, Brian's progress as a musician, songwriter and producer is so
clear as to verge on distraction. In fact, he was so good that his fans took it
for granted that with every new album, new frontiers would be broached. When
Smile fell by the wayside, and we were left to make sense of the remaining
pieces (Brian coped by writing songs about writing directions), all that hard
work seemed somehow for naught. This is the bad part: chiefly, when you expect
great things, good things disappoint.
Neutral Milk Hotel leader/only-permanent-member Jeff Mangum has more than a
little Brian in him. Musically, it seems he's quite familiar with those
Smile sessions, particularly in the way he can take an ounce of
pretension and turn it into all manner of a kitchen sink melodrama. And it's
not just the productions themselves, but also the idiosyncrasy at work, as if
personal vision somehow became a method of existence rather than a character
quirk. For better or worse, a little Brian goes a long way, and in general,
those afflicted (think Andy Partridge, not Sean O'Hagan) travel along similar
paths: a tale of small beginnings, steady progress building to whatever
masterpiece they were meant to produce, and then a sudden dimming like a dwarf
star.
Everything Is is a reissue of a three-song EP from 1995, with one
additional song. Like Wilson's earliest work, it offers few clues as to what
would come later, and is fairly innocuous on its own. However, it certainly
supports the idea that Mangum has steadily progressed, at least conceptually.
The title track is something like lo-fi glam folk, with a pinch of transience
that only people who truly love pop can have. Unfortunately, what stood out
first for me was that the singing sounded so disinterested, as if he was afraid
to get too close to the microphone-- or possibly, that he simply hadn't found
his voice yet.
"Snow Song, Pt. 1" sounds even more lo-fi than the opener, mostly because of
relentlessly out-of-tune guitars and Mangum's not-quite-in-synch, double-tracked
vocals. From any early stage, he seems not to have been as concerned with
songcraft and arrangement as weight and mood. Actually, these tunes seem to
have more in common with Dennis Wilson than Brian, due primarily to the
melancholy lead vocal and sincere (though verging on inept) accompaniment, but
also to the almost funny surfer/hippie twang in Mangum's delivery.
And then comes the obligatory (?) sound-collage piece, which I guess, given
the Smile background, could make sense. There are snippets of
conversation thrown in (and throughout the record), and though it reminds me of
something psychedelic-- a Blue Meanies march, perhaps, or something from a fever
dream-- I never figured Mangum as the LSD type. Perhaps it's just studio fun,
or possibly the effects of living below sea level for so long. In any case,
"Tuesday Moon" (not included on the previous version of this EP) wipes away
most of the residue. Again, fairly light stuff, but pop is pop, and when
you go down the Path Beaten by Brian, it's a prerequisite that you can write
catchy tunes.
Of course, we know what happened over the course of the next six years (and
two very good albums), and in this light, Everything Is seems harmless.
I couldn't recommend it to someone who had never heard Neutral Milk Hotel
before without feeling a little guilty, but for fans who don't already know the
whole story, it might serve as a nice prologue. Where I stray from my own
advice is upon the realization that after 40+ years writing music, Brian Wilson
has come full circle. His last album sounded good but the songwriting was a
shell of his former craft. By that logic, Mangum's later stuff will be
underachieving, poorly recorded fuzz-pop. Of course, it's probably not that
simple, but if by some chance he has a nervous breakdown after obsessing over
his next album, don't say I didn't warn you.
-Dominique Leone, October 4th, 2001