Elephant 6 were a group of psychedelic-minded musicians based first in Denver and then in Athens, Georgia. The oddest product of this collective remains Neutral Milk Hotel’s timelessly weird yet totally wonderful ‘The Aeroplane Over The Sea’ unleased on an unsuspecting public in 1998.
Although this bizarre concept album seemed to spring fully-formed out of nowhere, it was in fact preceded two years earlier by the equally eclectic ‘On Avery Island’, an album that may lack some of the out-there dynamics of what came after but is still satisfyingly strangely strange.
Fire Records now give this unique debut album the deluxe reissue treatment it deserves in a new brand-new double-album pressing on yellow and red vinyl cut at 45rpm with three tracks per side. The package comes complete with revised artwork and has been put together in collaboration with band leader Jeff Mangum.
Replete with leftfield instrumentation including accordion, singing saw, tape collages and the so-called “zanzithophone” (a Casio Digital Horn) , this band’s brand of offbeat eccentricity can now be heard in all its fully restored primitive glory. A quarter of a century on, new listeners will be able to judge whether or not it merits being labelled as ”a fuzzy masterpiece of experimental lo-fi recording.”
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To my ears the record expresses the spirit of Gormenghast creator Mervyn Peake when he wrote that “to live at all is miracle enough”. The presence of death is a constant cloud on the horizon but Mangum celebrates the here and now with lyrics like “I just want to dance in your tangles / To give me some reason to move” (Gardenhead/ Leave Me Alone).
Culminating blissfully, not to say surreally, with the go-for-broke fourteen minute Pree-Sister’s Swallowing a Donkey's Eye, this is an album that merits reappraisal and celebration.
The world is a very different place from when ‘On Avery Island’ first appeared but this “perennial spirit of youthful epiphany” still has a spontaneous freshness that stands up in a more cynical age.
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