Pitchfork

This is always how it ends up for perfectionist geniuses. While modern day recording techniques have cleaned up a lot of the extraneous human element, and actual error on tape has gone the way of the dodo, there can never really be a final, best take of music for people like Brian Wilson. The good part about this is that listeners are treated to ever-expanding and evolving displays of inspired performance. When you follow the lineage of Beach Boys albums up to Smile, Brian's progress as a musician, songwriter and producer is so clear as to verge on distraction. In fact, he was so good that his fans took it for granted that with every new album, new frontiers would be broached. When Smile fell by the wayside, and we were left to make sense of the remaining pieces (Brian coped by writing songs about writing directions), all that hard work seemed somehow for naught. This is the bad part: chiefly, when you expect great things, good things disappoint.

Neutral Milk Hotel leader/only-permanent-member Jeff Mangum has more than a little Brian in him. Musically, it seems he's quite familiar with those Smile sessions, particularly in the way he can take an ounce of pretension and turn it into all manner of a kitchen sink melodrama. And it's not just the productions themselves, but also the idiosyncrasy at work, as if personal vision somehow became a method of existence rather than a character quirk. For better or worse, a little Brian goes a long way, and in general, those afflicted (think Andy Partridge, not Sean O'Hagan) travel along similar paths: a tale of small beginnings, steady progress building to whatever masterpiece they were meant to produce, and then a sudden dimming like a dwarf star.

Everything Is is a reissue of a three-song EP from 1995, with one additional song. Like Wilson's earliest work, it offers few clues as to what would come later, and is fairly innocuous on its own. However, it certainly supports the idea that Mangum has steadily progressed, at least conceptually. The title track is something like lo-fi glam folk, with a pinch of transience that only people who truly love pop can have. Unfortunately, what stood out first for me was that the singing sounded so disinterested, as if he was afraid to get too close to the microphone-- or possibly, that he simply hadn't found his voice yet.

"Snow Song, Pt. 1" sounds even more lo-fi than the opener, mostly because of relentlessly out-of-tune guitars and Mangum's not-quite-in-synch, double-tracked vocals. From any early stage, he seems not to have been as concerned with songcraft and arrangement as weight and mood. Actually, these tunes seem to have more in common with Dennis Wilson than Brian, due primarily to the melancholy lead vocal and sincere (though verging on inept) accompaniment, but also to the almost funny surfer/hippie twang in Mangum's delivery.

And then comes the obligatory (?) sound-collage piece, which I guess, given the Smile background, could make sense. There are snippets of conversation thrown in (and throughout the record), and though it reminds me of something psychedelic-- a Blue Meanies march, perhaps, or something from a fever dream-- I never figured Mangum as the LSD type. Perhaps it's just studio fun, or possibly the effects of living below sea level for so long. In any case, "Tuesday Moon" (not included on the previous version of this EP) wipes away most of the residue. Again, fairly light stuff, but pop is pop, and when you go down the Path Beaten by Brian, it's a prerequisite that you can write catchy tunes.

Of course, we know what happened over the course of the next six years (and two very good albums), and in this light, Everything Is seems harmless. I couldn't recommend it to someone who had never heard Neutral Milk Hotel before without feeling a little guilty, but for fans who don't already know the whole story, it might serve as a nice prologue. Where I stray from my own advice is upon the realization that after 40+ years writing music, Brian Wilson has come full circle. His last album sounded good but the songwriting was a shell of his former craft. By that logic, Mangum's later stuff will be underachieving, poorly recorded fuzz-pop. Of course, it's probably not that simple, but if by some chance he has a nervous breakdown after obsessing over his next album, don't say I didn't warn you.