I imagine this is the case for the vast majority of people, but I also got into Neutral Milk Hotel backwards - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea then On Avery Island. I'd been listening to In the Aeroplane... for four months when I bought this one, and was already a huge fan (something you can read much, much more about here). I'd read lots about their first album, so I think I went into knowing it wasn't going to blow me away quite as much as the sequel had. I enjoyed it, but it took much longer to actually get into it.
On Avery Island is definitely a harder album on the ears. I've since learned to love the levels of fuzz throughout the whole album, but when the first thing you hear is the fuzzed-up Song Against Sex you know it's going to take some effort and perseverance to get into. I played the album a bunch of times, but the songs didn't quite jump out at me and it was definitely under-appreciated for a while.
The first song of these 12 that I really fell in love with was Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone, which I enjoy for both its beat and the fact that Jeff sings the first half as if he's constantly exhaling. About nine months after I bought On Avery Island I was in Canada with some friends, and at the end of the trip we were all going our separate ways and for the first time in two and a half weeks I was on my own. I was stood waiting for a bus to go to the airport with my mp3 player on shuffle when I realised how incredible Gardenhead is. I guess I was paying it more attention than I had before, and without the rest of the album to hide it I could appreciate it as a single song (albeit two songs squeezed together). As a side note, my mp3 player on shuffle was responsible for me getting into a number of albums I was struggling with as a whole, most notably Radiohead's Hail to the Thief, which I eventually noticed was 14 great individual songs.
Another thing that helped me properly discover On Avery Island was the brilliantly basic recording of Jeff playing solo between the two NMH releases on Live at Jittery Joes. He plays a number of songs from the first record and they come across brilliantly stripped back to just an acoustic guitar, which in turn allowed me to appreciate them better on the LP. I saw Jeff play live last year and one of the songs from this album that impressed me the most was April 8th, one of the darkest sounding songs Jeff's ever released, which was otherwise hidden away at the end followed by a few more minutes of fuzz.
So it took me some effort, but I am now a big fan of On Avery Island too; it's certainly more than just "the other Neutral Milk Hotel LP" to me at least.
Format: 12", insert
Tracks: 12
Cost: £11 new
Bought: Spillers Records
When: 10/06/08
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: no
