Over the last decade, the music world has had to scramble to fill the void that Neutral Milk Hotel’s absence has left in our collective hearts. Some of us lost ourselves in fan communities. Others began posing as Jeff Mangum on the internet. Some let large rodents out of cages, with the belief that if a gopher saw its shadow, Mangum would be missing for another six weeks. Still others began growing carrot flowers, trying desperately to be their righteous and just kings. None of this has worked to bring back Neutral Milk Hotel in any substantial way.
Shawn Fogel, frontman of the relatively unknown power-pop band Golden Bloom, has his own way of coping with the 10-year lapse in Neutral Milk Hotel activity. And like Roger Greenawalt and Dave Barratt with The Beatles, and Israel Kamakawiwo’ole with Louis Armstrong and Judy Garland, he’s found his comfort in a tiny under-appreciated tropical instrument: the ukulele.
Fogel has committed to the project of rearranging the entirety of In the Aeroplane over the Sea for the ukulele. Remember that part in “King of Carrot Flowers pts. Two & Three” when the music explodes into a mess of distortion? That’s going to be on there… only it’ll be plucked delicately on the ukulele. And that haunting singing saw section in the title track? Well, that’s there too! …only now, it’s going to sound a lot more like a 14-inch, high-pitched guitar. Oh, and “Two Headed-Boy Pt. Two,” which relies on shifts in the guitar melody to create the cathartic conclusion to debatably the most beloved release of the 1990s? That, of course, will be there… only instead of dissonant and timeless, it’s going to remind you of that Caribbean cruise your parents forced you to go on when you were 13.
But in a time when new Mangum material consists mostly of shouting “I think I hear him!” while listening to the The Apples in Stereo’s New Magnetic Wonder and sobbing while watching videos from 2008’s Elephant Six Holiday tour, maybe this is a good thing. Maybe you can hire Fogel to do the set at your 4th of July luau in Brooklyn. And at least he’s not playing the songs under some pun name, trivializing the source material even furth – wait, he’s calling himself Neutral “Uke” Hotel? You’re on your own, Fogel.
Fogel got the idea while working with Barratt and Greenawalt’s aforementioned “The Beatles Complete on Ukulele.” He currently only has one performance scheduled as Neutral Uke Hotel: Friday, May 7 at the Arts at the Armory in Somerville, Massachusetts. Though if this whole thing goes viral, he may be strumming his tiny uke in a city near you, or at least re-recording Loveless on a kazoo.
Oh, and Jeff Mangum will be playing a very short set at the (sold out) Chris Knox benefit in New York on May 6.
• Golden Bloom: http://goldenbloom.net
[Photo: Alicia J. Rose]
