Little Birds- Neutral Milk Hotel
A few weeks ago Neutral Milk Hotel announced an exhaustive, career spanning box set containing everything that they've ever released, and shared the live version and demo "Little Birds", which is the last song that Mangum ever wrote. The lo-fi production and emphasis on Jeff Mangum's yelpy vocals immediately calls back to the charming intimacy of their masterwork, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and probably could have fit neatly on that record's second side. The sparse arrangement, consisting of vocals and acoustic guitar from Jeff, accordion from the band's Jeremy Barnes, and violin from Heather Trost, hits some early onset momentum from Jeff's raw guitar playing that never really lets up. There's more space here than on most NMH recordings which gives Jeff's voice plenty of room to sprawl as the music progresses.
"Little Birds" was supposedly informed by an experience that Mangum had confronting a street preacher in Athens who was spewing anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, and it's not hard to hear tried and true Christian talking points reverberating throughout "Daddy, come towards me/I can see his hands are shaking/Put his hands against me, he could feel their bodies breaking/Push me to the floor and put his hands up for a beating/"I don't want to hear it anymore" he kept repeating/Do you really want the burning hell to come and get you". "Little Birds" is as well-realized as anything on ItAOtS, and while it doesn't sound like there are any new unreleased gems from the band on the horizon, it's a welcome surprise to finally have it available.