Somewhere back in time, before Elephant 6 or even Neutral Milk Hotel proper, there were just Jeff Mangum's random ideas and experiments recorded to cassette tapes. 'Beauty', the second of these tapes, is where we
really start to hear the makings of something truly great.
Opening track "Engine" is a slow, sweet lullaby written while Jeff was ironically going through depression. The song has since seen a proper studio release as a b-side to a single, and is still played at concerts
even today. On "Sailing Through," Jeff emotes with such passion that the refrain's lyric, "You are a liar/and you are a lie," crescendos into something beyond incoherent. The best song on the tape, though, is
"Wishful Eyes," a slow, hypnotic six-minute track with a simple chord progression that carries the weight of the song as Jeff croons, "Everybody knows/the world continues slow/whether or not you're still
breathing." Despite sounding incomplete, the melody is among Mangum's best, one that will have you rewinding it over and over.
The real value of 'Beauty' lies in the fact that it showcases the work of a near-mythical musician well before he ever attained that status. This is not really Neutral Milk Hotel; there are no accordions or
flugelhorns or musical saws. This is just a man with a guitar recording songs and random other things, and seeing if any of these ideas might bear fruit. But much more than 'Invent Yourself A Shortcake' (the first
tape), you can start to see where the seeds were planted that would eventually grow into the sound of the band we have come know and love.
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