- Band Members: Jeff Mangum
- Genre: Rock & Alternative
- Influenced by: The Beatles, The Zombies, Sonic Youth, Pink Floyd, The Beach Boys
- Followed By: Laura Gibson, Evangelicals, Oh No! Oh My!, Music Tapes, David Karsten Daniels, Birdlips, Richard Brown, The Unicorns, Frontier Ruckus, Benni Hemm Hemm, The A-Sides, Curses!, Handsome Furs, Manchester Orchestra, The Broken Family Band, That Ghost, Quinn Walker, The Boy Bathing, Blind Pilot, Sarah Barrett, The Acorn, Tilly and the Wall, The Shaky Hands, Noah and the Whale, Run on Sentence, Page France, The Pica Beats, Donny Hue, The Meligrove Band, Bomb the Music Industry!, Southeast Engine, Charles Burst, El Boxeo
- Similar Artists: The Little Ones, Sebadoh, Pavement, Brian Dewan, Guided by Voices, The Apples in Stereo, The Olivia Tremor Control, Secret Square, Of Montreal, Elf Power, The Gerbils, Beulah, The Minders, Marbles, Music Tapes, The Essex Green, Summer Hymns, Ashley Park, Saturday Looks Good to Me, Darren Hanlon, The Decemberists, Everybody Uh-Oh, Instruments, Quasar Wut-Wut, Rogue Wave, Arcade Fire
The self-described "fuzz-folk" project Neutral Milk Hotel was one of the primary outgrowths of the Elephant 6 Recording Company collective, a coterie of like-minded, lo-fi indie groups -- including the Apples (in stereo), the Olivia Tremor Control and Secret Square -- who shared musicians, ideas, and sensibilities. While ranging in sound and concept from solo acoustic work to full band performances, Neutral Milk Hotel essentially remained the work of Jeff Mangum, a singer/songwriter from the remote town of Ruston, LA. Ruston was also home to Robert Schneider (later of the Apples), as well as William Cullen Hart and Bill Doss (who formed the Olivia Tremor Control); throughout high school, the aspiring musicians -- all influenced by the likes of the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Zombies, Pink Floyd, and Sonic Youth -- exchanged home recordings and played in each other's bands.
Neutral Milk Hotel first took shape in 1989 as a noise rock trio that played its debut gig at a local laundromat; a year later, Mangum, Hart, and Doss moved to Athens, GA, to form the group Cranberry Life Cycle, which later became Synthetic Flying Machine (and ultimately the Olivia Tremor Control) after Mangum's departure. In 1993, he and Schneider relocated to Denver, CO, where Schneider soon founded the Apples (in stereo). Eventually, Mangum gravitated to New York and resumed recording under the Neutral Milk Hotel aegis. After a series of singles and privately released cassettes, including Invent Yourself a Shortcake, Beauty, and Hype City, Mangum travelled back to Denver to record the critically acclaimed 1996 album On Avery Island on Schneider's four-track machine; in the the spring of 1997 he again returned to Colorado to begin work on the follow-up, the brilliant In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. ~ Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide