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Review: Kyle Minton

Oh how lucky we are, to be present in a time where the name Jeff Mangum is less myth and more man. Drawn out of his reclusive presence for whatever reason, Mangum has kept himself busy under the public’s eye in his reemergence by fashioning his brand to a well-dressed website (link), putting a hefty price tag on a brand new vinyl box set of Neutral Milk Hotel’s work, and an honest-to-goodness tour for the masses. The collection is compact—gorgeously arranged in the case of the two full length LPs—but is perhaps most notable for the Ferris Wheel On Fire EP, a collection of eight unreleased tracks that, given your relative affinity for Neutral Milk Hotel and your ability to scour the internet, you have probably heard before in some fashion. Given the cult classic status that was given to Mangum’s work following the release of Aeroplane, it’s relatively unsurprising that an EP filled to the brim with unreleased tracks would be old news for diligent fans of bootleg recordings and rare 7-inch releases. For younger, newer fans under the influence of Mangum’s art, Ferris Wheel On Fire is an appropriately raw, acoustic b-side release that delivers on the nostalgia for In The Aeroplane Over The Sea and On Avery Island that most of us are too young to have. 

As mentioned before, much of Ferris Wheel On Fire is old news—“Engine” was a Mangum favorite to play following Aeroplane’s release and was previously available on the Holland, 1945 7 Inch, “A Baby for Pree/Glow Into You” and “April 8th” are respectively extended and alternate versions of their On Avery Island counterparts; the other tracks serve as a menagerie of unreleased acoustic tracks with varying connections to Aeroplane’s theme and sound.

Being the would-be companion piece to “Oh Comely,” the ardent yelling and pulsing strumming done by Mangum in “Oh Sister” serves as perhaps the most enthralling connection to the story of Goldaline in Aeroplane as Mangum directly addresses the girl he often spoke of saving with his same style of abrasively sensual depth: ”Rose Wallace Goldaline just moves her mouth over anything/ Fleshy free and flowering with oranges out in the open.” The song is the exact counterpart to the drawn and elaborate conclusion found in “Oh Comely;” here Mangum is quick and desperate with his tongue, exchanging the latter’s dramatic crawl with an urgent climb to Mangum’s most urgent wishes regarding the loss tragedy revolving around Goldaline. 

It’s within Mangum’s mouth that we find the majority of Ferris Wheel On Fire’s ebullient nature; the guitar becomes a secondary addition in light of Mangum’s powerful position as a story-teller, richly detailing every intimate moment, whether it be the tale of Goldaline in “Oh Sister” or the deeply toxic attitude found in Mangum’s tone in “Home.” The latter is superlatively vicious in terms of Mangum’s usual delicacies regarding anger, and the ordinarily tranquil songwriter brusquely wears at his guitar’s strings as the feverishly delivered notes serve as a platform for his sharp tone:  ”You’re just another family member on their knees/ just a social-work statistic out the door;” The song simply blisters its listeners, and is the exception to the rule as it’s the only deviation from Mangum’s usual composure found on Ferris Wheel On Fire.

The value of Ferris Wheel On Fire depends heavily on what you ever came to Neutral Milk Hotel for. If the richly fuzzy sound of Aeroplane’s dizzying collection of styles entertained you endlessly, you might find the drone of Mangum’s guitar from each song to the next to be. The treasure of this release lies not within Mangum’s repetitious yet, competent guitar playing, or even the singing saw delicacies provided by Julian Koster on “Engine,” but the painfully awkward collection of brilliant visions and thoughts contained in Mangum’s words. There’s an argument to be made for Neutral Milk Hotel’s main appeal lying within the words behind every 60’s influenced psychedelic arrangement—I’d even go as far as to tell you Aeroplane is one of my favorite short story collections of all time—but if you can tire of Mangum’s cracking drawl and his admittedly exhausting imagination, perhaps you’re better off sticking to the rich, gentler sounds of songs such as “Holland, 1945,” or Aeroplane’s title track. 

There’s a sense of melancholy that pervades Ferris Wheel On Fire, attributed mostly to the continued themes of longing of time travel and loss that spread across the tracks, but also in the existence of the tracks themselves. Ferris Wheel On Fire is a strange beast, a collection of eight songs recorded in a mindset that no longer exists within Mangum today. In Mangum’s interview with Pitchfork in 2002, he described his work with Elephant 6, detailing the group’s intentions of “[having] a very utopian vision that [they] could overcome anything through music,” and goes on to tell the well-known tale of the crumbling of that thought process, and how his hiatus from the public eye resulted from it. Given that knowledge, a collection containing five unreleased songs written before Mangum’s world of innocence crumbled becomes significantly more precious. 

Ferris Wheel On Fire is a hard sale as a physical product given the exorbitant pricing of the Neutral Milk Hotel box set, especially so if you’re solely interested in hearing the EP. Mangum’s website has a place for pay-what-you-want downloads (link), and so presumably the internet will soon take to the website with glee and consume Ferris Wheel On Fire with all the legality surrounding digital downloads intact, and for most fans a simple digital download will suffice. Devoted fans of Neutral Milk Hotel will doubtlessly tell you the benefits and added tactile to hearing “Oh Sister” for the first time on wax, but it makes little different in the medium acquired as long as you’re hearing the ghost of Mangum sing like he never left. The face behind the name Jeff Mangum is an unpredictable soul, with the aforementioned full-fledged tour and this box set cementing his existence for those of us too young to be present for the 98’ phenomenon. If anything, Ferris Wheel On Fire is a reminder that the name Neutral Milk Hotel still makes for one of the most unique experiences in music, so be sure to force Mangum’s infectiously strange outlook on life on a friend or two while you’re celebrating the release. 

Score: [9.5/10]