LPCDreissues: Looking forward to the past

Format: LP red vinyl (ltd 500 copies) / LP yellow vinyl (ltd 500 copies) both versions with printed inner sleeve and free download card for the album + 2 bonus tracks
Part of the Elephant 6 family (a collective of lo-fi indie bands from the nineties that included The Apples In Stereo and Olivia Tremor Control), Neutral Milk Hotel is the lo-fi brainchild of Louisiana-native Jeff Mangum. 1996's On Avery Island is an inscrutable concept album, a chronicle of an insular world told in a remarkably universal language. A fuzzy masterpiece of experimental lo-fi recording, the album wraps its ragged pop songs in ribbons of loops, marching-band squawks, and Casio noodling; the opener, "Song Against Sex," is as much a manifesto as a kick-off, a self-propelled marvel hopped up on rapid-fire wordplay and a stunningly ramshackle melody punctuated by bloated trombone moans. Throughout the record, Jeff Mangum's wheels threaten to fly off at any time -- his songs are cryptic and crazed, his ideas fast and furious, and together they force the home-recording concept out of the basement and into a brave new world.
Track listing - Side A: 1. Song Against Sex 2. You've Passed 3. Someone Is Waiting 4. A Baby For Pree 5. Marching Theme 6. Where You'll Find Me Now 1. Avery Island / April 1st 2. Gardenhead / Leave Me Alone 3. Three Peaches 4. Naomi 5. April 8th 6. Pree-Sisters Swallowing a Donkey's Eye bonus tracks download card only: 13.Everything Is 14.Snow Song Pt. 1