Pitchfork

With the album unceasingly climbing the "classic album" ladder and hushed rumors about its creator passing into an area reserved for folk legends or intense outsider hermits like Syd Barrett or Roky Erickson, both In the Aeroplane Over the Sea and Jeff Mangum have taken on lives of mythic proportions over the years. We won't speculate Mangum's reasons for the long period of inactivity since the height of Aeroplane, but we can always talk about the musical magnum opus, which still manages to illicit responses in listeners ranging from light-headedness to gaga-esque. This unification of pop chaos and splendid softness is reminiscent of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, another unexpected swan song. But while Kevin Shields pops sporadically out of his burrow to drop a Pastels remix or a Sofia Coppola soundtrack before seeing his shadow and scurrying back to another few years of self-imposed "winter", Jeff Mangum has rarely been seen or heard from for much longer than that.

The vastly outdated band site alludes to the last period of activity concerning possibly releasing rare tracks in a two-disc collection. While Mangum or someone else must certainly be sitting on a pile of Neutral Milk Hotel rarities from the band's productive Elephant 6-associated days, the first fruits may be coming quicker than many ever suspected or ever dreamed. Domino Records will be re-releasing In an Aeroplane Over the Sea in the UK, where the album has been out of print and sans label for years. No release date or bonus track listing has been made available yet.

But that's not all, Fire Records will be re-releasing Neutral Milk Hotel's first album On Avery Island. Again the track details and date of issue are still up in the air but it seems that Fire are onto an actual band-endorsed re-release as it claims on the label's site, "We are very pleased to announce we'll be reissuing the classic Neutral Milk Hotel record On Avery Island at the band's request. They're planning a whole new package including some live bonus tracks. More to follow."

* Neutral Milk Hotel: