Neutral Milk Hotel announce career-spanning vinyl box set and share previously unreleased track

Neutral Milk Hotel have announced a career-spanning vinyl box set, compiling both of their studio albums along with a wide range of rarities.

‘The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel’ will arrive February 24 via Merge, and contains both the band’s 1996 debut ‘On Avery Island’ along with its acclaimed follow-up, 1998’s ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’.

In addition, the box set will include the band’s ‘Everything Is’ and ‘Ferris Wheel on Fire’ EPs, as well as a live album recorded during a performance at Athens, Georgia venue Jittery Joe’s in 1997. Also included are the ‘Holland 1945/Engine’ seven-inch on black vinyl and alternate versions of songs such as ‘You’ve Passed’ and ‘Where You’ll Find Me Now’. See an image of the box set and its tracklist below. Pre-orders are available now.

The compilation will also include previously unreleased track ‘Little Birds’, which has been released digitally for the first time today. According to a press release, Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Mangum wrote the song on a day in 1998, performing it live later that day at a friend’s party.

Mangum wrote ‘Little Birds’ after “a confrontation with a street preacher in downtown Athens, who was spewing hatred towards LGBTQ people”. The resulting song is “about many things, including how conservative Christianity too often imbues so-called believers with an utterly warped sense of morality”. Listen below to both a live version and early demo of the song:

Forming in 1989, Neutral Milk Hotel broke up for the first time in 1998, the same year the band released ‘In The Aeroplane Over The Sea’. With the rise of the internet in the late 1990s and early 2000s, they developed a cult online following, with the album exploding in popularity despite the band’s prolonged inactivity.

In 2013, Mangum reunited Neutral Milk Hotel for an extensive world tour that ran up until mid-2015, when the band went on hiatus once again. When announcing the tour’s final leg, the band said it would be their last shows “for the foreseeable future”, telling fans “we love you, but it’s time to say goodbye”.

‘The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel’ vinyl box set. Credit: Merge Records

‘The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel’ tracklist is:

‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’
1. ‘King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1’
2. ‘King of Carrot Flowers Pts. 2 & 3’
3. ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’
4. ‘Two-Headed Boy’
5. ‘Fool’
6. ‘Holland, 1945’
7. ‘Communist Daughter’
8. ‘Oh Comely’
9. ‘Ghost’
10. ‘[untitled]’
11. ‘Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2’

‘On Avery Island’
1. ‘Song Against Sex’
2. ‘You’ve Passed’
3. ‘Someone Is Waiting’
4. ‘A Baby for Pree’
5. ‘Marching Theme’
6. ‘Where You’ll Find Me Now’
7. ‘Avery Island/April 1st’
8. ‘Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone’
9. ‘Three Peaches’
10. ‘Naomi’
11. ‘April 8th’
12. ‘Pree-Sisters Swallowing a Donkey’s Eye’

‘Ferris Wheel on Fire’
1. ‘Oh Sister’ (1995)
2. ‘Ferris Wheel On Fire’ (1993)
3. ‘Home’ (1992)
4. ‘April 8th’ (1992)
5. ‘I Will Bury You in Time’ (1994
6. ‘Engine’ (1993)
7. ‘A Baby for Pree/Glow Into You’ (1995)
8. ‘My Dream Girl Don’t Exist’ (Live) [1992]

‘Everything Is’
1. ‘Everything Is’
2. ‘Here We Are (For W. Cullen Hart)’
3. ‘Unborn’
4. ‘Tuesday Moon’
5. ‘Ruby Bulb’
6. ‘Snow Song’
7. ‘Aunt Eggma Blow Torch’

‘Little Birds’
1. ‘Little Birds’ (Live) [1998]
2. ‘Little Birds’ (Studio Demo) [1998]

‘You’ve Passed / Where You’ll Find Me Now’
1. ‘You’ve Passed’ (Alternate Version)
2. ‘Where You’ll Find Me Now’ (Alternate Version)

‘Live at Jittery Joe’s’
1. ‘Intro’
2. ‘A Baby for Pree’
3. ‘Two-Headed Boy’
4. ‘I Will Bury You in Time’
5. ‘Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone’
6. ‘Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2’
7. ‘I Love How You Love Me’
8. ‘Engine’
9. ‘Naomi’
10. ‘King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 2’
11. ‘King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 3’
12. ‘Oh Comely’