Neutral Milk Hotel - On Avery Island
1996
This album should be owned on vinyl. Not just because that makes it the ultimate hipster status symbol, which it does, but because it is obviously meant to be listened to on vinyl. When you listen to a digital version it sounds like you're listening to vinyl, except you get those infuriating breaks between the songs.
This album is so warm, it feels like an old friend. It begs you to melt into it. Someone complained to me about the last track, which is a fuzzy, noisy dronescape, and I honestly did not know what they were talking about. I had to go back and listen to it and realize that it does end like that. By the time I get to the end of this album it has moved into a back corner of my mind and I don't even really notice it on a conscious level. That, for me, is the sign of a very good album. Tago Mago does the same thing, the first half is so mesmerizing that I'm usually too blissed out to notice the second half.
But really, this is an album album. There is a unity here that never threatens to get monotonous. Each song flows into the next. Each song is beautiful. It's difficult to differentiate between acoustic and synthesized instruments because they all swarm together in a lo-fi haze. It sounds like a stoned day at the carnival. Everything sounds delicate and self-enclosed; this is the sort of album that will make you forget the outside world exists at all. The lyrics are simultaneously personal and universal, with a vocal delivery that borders on melancholy but always goes for hope over despair.
The music itself is equally wonderful. A dreamy medley of all sorts of folk music drifting together, mournfully inspired trumpet playing, acoustic guitar picking, supported by washes of analogue synth and a propelling drum/bass section. The lo-fi aesthetic literally ties it all together, with each voice bleeding color into the others. The album picks up and slows down, but there is never a dull moment. Lose yourself in it.