On the Road Again
Live Reviews:

Neutral Milk Hotel
July 29, 1998
The Legendary Horseshoe Tavern, Toronto, ON

There's always an air of excitement when the circus comes to town, and for Toronto's indie-pop intelligencia, the local debut of Neutral Milk Hotel had the makings of an event that even PT Barnum couldn't top.

But as the clock struck 11 pm, we were all starting to feel like a bunch of suckers. Neutral Milk Hotel may be able to effortlessly fuse their bread-and-butter fuzzed-out guitars and crashing drums with supplementary doses of accordions, tubas, trumpets, analog synths, singing saws, euphoniums, zanzithiphones and various other instruments you've never heard of, but reading a road map is apparently not on their list of talents. As showtime drew near, both Neutral Milk and openers Elf Power were lost somewhere on the 401, the victims of an American education system that shapes young impressionable Yankee minds into thinking all cities in Canada are located a mere 20 minutes from one another.

But as PT used to preach, the show must go on. NMH finally cannonballed into the 'Shoe minutes after midnight and, in an effort to appease the restless masses, agreed to perform ahead of scheduled openers Elf Power. But instead of an unruly mob, apologetic NMH ringleader Jeff Magnum was greeted with a blissfully inebriated throng (no doubt thanks to the extended wait time) eager to be amazed.

No problem, says Jeff. On record, Neutral Milk Hotel resemble a time machine with faulty circuitry, coasting simultaneously through roaring '20s jazz, Depression-era folk lyricism and '60s psychedelia and then beaming it through a late-night college radio show sometime during the late '80s. But on-stage, Magnum and his cast of assorted freaks (bushy-bearded multi-instrumentalist Scott Spillane looks like a hitchhiker picked up somewhere in the Ozarks) exude the sugar-high of a bunch of kids bashing along to Black Sabbath records in their bedrooms.

Tonight, the opening "Where You'll Find Me Now," a lonesome lament from 1996's On Avery Island, is transformed into a muscular, dare-I-say moshable anthem; the already furious "Holland 1945" and "King of Carrot Flowers Pts. II and III" (both from the new, impeccable In An Aeroplane Over The Sea) are driven into psych-trash overdrive. Complementing NMH's musical chaos is their amorphous stage presence, as band members swap instruments like they're hot potatoes, changing from marching band ensemble to noise-punk quartet at the drop of a flugelhorn. And when Magnum takes solo turns on "Two Headed Boy" and Aeroplane's gorgeous title track, the effect is no less invigorating, his sustained wails filling the gaps left by his resting mates.

PT would have been proud, for on this night Neutral Milk Hotel were indeed the greatest show on earth.