You could be forgiven if the name had slipped off your radar. Neutral Milk Hotel were indie contenders formed in Athens, Georgia back in the day. There were two full-length albums – On Avery Island and In the Aeroplane Over the Sea – in the second half of the Nineties which intrigued a loyal fanbase with crashing chord structures, instruments plucked from a cabinet of curiosities, and opaque lyrics. And then the rest was silence. Frontman Jeff Mangum retreated from the limelight and the band vanished off the map. For 15 years the closest anyone could get to worshipping at the altar was signing up to Arcade Fire instead.
Last year, just as suddenly, Neutral Milk resurfaced. They’re touring far and wide, as part of which they have already sold out three nights at the Roundhouse. For this London pitstop they were due to play at the Jabberwocky Festival in the Excel Centre (where the boxing and the badminton happened during the Olympics), but that was cancelled at the 11th hour so a slot was rearranged for the Forum. It sold out in a couple of hours. The band’s following has never forgotten.
The set opened to whooping and no doubt weeping
Integral to the mystique of Neutral Milk is Mangum, who has the aura of a fully bearded prophet just in from the wilderness. He stands apart, stage left, and like a street statue barely moves other than to strum power chords on a battered acoustic guitar. Around him the other original members of the band have a more antic disposition. Drummer Jeremy Barnes thrashes like a wild man. Scott Spillane, with a snow-white underbeard, strums and blows and sings along like a frantic senior Smurf. And then there’s Julian Koster, a rubbery imp in a foppish Botticelli beret who like the world’s most indecisive minstrel commutes restlessly from organ to bass to accordion to tinkling bell to musical saw (he had three lined up onstage, but only used the one).
With Mangum’s singular lyrics occluded by the volume knob, the band's soundscape would have a tendency to merge and blur but for a bewildering array of musical colours. The instrumental formation was never the same from song to song, a kaleidoscope augmented by the contribution stage right of Jeremy Thal, a one-man brass band who also filled in on keyboards, bass and Uilleann pipes. Mangum's wife Astra Taylor also wandered on discreetly a couple of times to strum along on guitar.
The set opened to whooping and no doubt weeping with an assertive “I Will Bury You in Time”, a brassy “Holland, 1945”, and then proceeded to stroll purposefully around the back catalogue. Songs elided into others with minimal stops for interaction. The single acoustic guitar of “Two Headed Boy” made way for the oom-pah blasts of “Fool”. “King of Carrot Flowers” was a thrilling switchback ride from contemplation (“I love you Jesus Christ!” hollered Mangum) to furious noise.
Mangum barely said a thing as the set advanced through to the howl-cum-chant “Oh Comely” and a locomotive “Song Against Sex”. The encore came round without any theatrical pause for the audience to clamour for more, five songs beginning with “Little Birds” and ending in “Engine”. Their last stop in the UK is the Green Man Festival, and then they won’t be back for a while. Don’t wait for another 15 years, gentlemen. This was not so much a gig as a peak-beard indie communion, and a faithful congregation hankers for more.
