Neutral Milk Hotel have announced a career-spanning vinyl box set. The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel includes both of the group’s LPs—1996’s On Avery Island and 1998’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea—as well as live recordings, alternate takes, unreleased material, and more. The collection arrives February 24 via Merge. Among the perviously unreleased tracks included in the box set is “Little Birds,” which has been released digitally today for the first time. Hear it below and scroll down for images of the box set.
“Little Birds,” according to a press release, is a song that Neutral Milk Hotel mastermind Jeff Mangum wrote in 1998 and played at a friend’s party later that day. He wrote the track after a confrontation with a street preacher in Athens, Georgia, who was spewing hatred aimed at LGBTQ+ people. A small group of people, including Mangum, gathered and shouted back at him, and the preacher eventually left the scene. Mangum didn’t play the song again for 10 years, but it was eventually recorded live at the Prospect Park Bandshell in Brooklyn during Neutral Milk Hotel’s 2014 reunion tour. The latter version is the one included in the Merge box set.
In 2011, Mangum collected nearly all of the band’s recorded output in a limited-edition box set, which he self-released via Neutral Milk Hotel Records—a small operation run by Mangum and his mother. The Merge edition marks the collection’s first digital release and includes an expanded 2xLP edition of On Avery Island, an exclusive 12″ picture disc of Live at Jittery Joe’s (recorded in 1997), the “Holland, 1945” b/w “Engine” 7″ on black vinyl with brand new artwork, and more.
The set also features a remastered version of the 1994 Everything Is 7″, which has been pressed to 10″ vinyl as an extended EP. Mangum has also added a few songs from that period: “Unborn,” “You’ve Passed,” and “Where You’ll Find Me Now.” The Ferris Wheel on Fire 10″ EP includes the addition of “My Dream Girl Don’t Exist.”
Revisit “How Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea Became a Polarizing Cult Classic” and check out Pitchfork’s list of “The 150 Best Albums of the 1990s.”
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The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel:
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea:
01 King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1
02 King of Carrot Flowers Pts. 2 & 3
03 In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
04 Two-Headed Boy
05 Fool
06 Holland, 1945
07 Communist Daughter
08 Oh Comely
09 Ghost
10 [untitled]
11 Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2
On Avery Island:
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