Today, Neutral Milk Hotel release The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel via Merge Records, the first widespread, comprehensive release of their storied discography, and make their complete catalog available to stream in full for the first time ever. Order it now in the Merge store, and stream Neutral Milk Hotel's catalog wherever you listen to music!

The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel is a discography-spanning compendium of Jeff Mangum’s musical universe, assembling the treasures that have floated around in the musical ether since the 1998 release of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, which recently celebrated its 25th Anniversary. In that time, Neutral Milk Hotel never made an official music video, preferring to allow their listeners to create their own visuals in their head. One such visual interpretation is Naomi Yang’s reflective take on “Naomi,” a song for which she is the inspiration and namesake. 

Of the task, Yang states:

"How do you direct a video for a song that was written about you?

The first member of Neutral Milk Hotel I met was saw player Julian Koster. Our bands were each playing the psychedelic Terrastock festival, and Julian approached me like a mischievous sprite, just as he appears onstage. “We want you to have our record,” he said. “The song ‘Naomi’ is about you.”

I was charmed by the album and by the band in all its raucous joy, but wasn’t sure about the namesake song. The lyrics seemed sweet but disquieting—a fan letter with a dark edge. Then, years later, in anticipation of a retrospective box set release, I made a music video for “Naomi” with the blessing of the band.

Neutral Milk Hotel had by then become enormously popular—and had probably received a fair amount of obsessive fan letters themselves. I thought about taking back ownership of a fan’s infatuation. I filmed myself lip syncing the song—inhabiting the very lyrics that had been written about me. I photographed personal objects that a fan of mine might recognize: my bass, a dress I had performed in, spiral earrings I had worn—actively creating my own iconography. And, as a subtle reply to the original “fan letter,” I included an object that references Jeff Mangum’s own fan idolatry: a copy of The Diary of Anne Frank.

Now it has been 26 years since I was handed that first LP, and 11 years since I made the “Naomi” video. I have come to know all the band members as especially lovely people, and I am no longer at all unsettled by the song “Naomi.” I am truly honored that it was written."

The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel includes the previously shared first official release of fan-favorite “Little Birds,” as well as the Everything Is reissue — presented as the extended EP Magnum always envisioned, complete with previously unreleased tracks “Here We Are (For W. Cullen Hart),” “Unborn” and “Interlude” — plus the release of early versions of On Avery Island highlights “You’ve Passed” and “Where You’ll Find Me Now.” Also included on the box set is a 10” Ferris Wheel on Fire EP, accompanied by a card denoting the year that each song was written, helping to illustrate how the Neutral Milk Hotel catalog took shape. A final component of the box portrays that process viscerally: a 12” picture disc of Live at Jittery Joe’s, the live album recorded in 1997 that Mangum first released in 2001. 

If the live recordings, alternate takes, and time stamps of this box set illustrate the process of Neutral Milk Hotel’s world coming into focus, it’s fitting. In a recent conversation, Mangum reflected on a question he’s gotten often: Why didn’t Neutral Milk ever make a video? 

But, he clarified, the band made millions of videos—all in people’s minds. Everybody has their own Neutral Milk Hotel film in their head. For an artist who took root in the liberating aesthetic of underground tape-trading and DIY punk—whose sense of what music can be was permanently altered by the Minutemen’s non formulaic structures, by their mix of the political and the impressionistic; who announced, at the start of his catalog, “I’m finally breaking free from fear”—it’s an invitation to hear the music, and then become a part of it.