Rating:
Genre:
Rock
Release Date: 11/03/2009
Like their
Elephant 6 labelmates and kindred spirits
Olivia Tremor Control's
Music From the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle,
Neutral Milk Hotel's debut,
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 kickoff, 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.
~Jason Ankeny, All Music Guide
;)
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