Neutral Milk Hotel

On the band's second album, Jeff Mangum crosses the line between abstract folk singer and something more akin to cryptic genius. The song arrangements and musical backdrops are perfectly fuzzy and off-kilter, but it's Mangum -- obviously enraptured by some intangible muse -- who delivers most on this album.

Those two great overgrown gardens of American mainstream pop, the Beach Boys' Pet
Sounds and Fleetwood Mac's Tusk, have had oddly different effects on their admirers.
Looked at one way, the albums responsibly connect with old American idioms – the
marching band, the parlor song – and also open the door to new reaches of sound. In
another way, they give off the wrong message, burying the hard gem of songcra... More >