hm the acknowledgments page at the front says "Thanks go out to Jeff Mangum, whose approval of this project precipitated many of the interviews within, and whose songs are the reason for them." so i find that pretty hard to believe, though i know he's an incredibly private guy.
the album has always been special to me, but something in reading about how it was made, with a disconnected group of guys just sorta bopping around all over georgia, denver, nyc, and eventually just landing in one place through some magic and happenstance reminded me of how i came to know and love it best, in college, playing it over and over with friends, obsessing over the lyrics and going down rabbit holes of what they meant and what they meant to us.
i love the way the author treats the lyrics, too, which is basically to say she doesn't give much of an interpretation, just notes where the echoes are, the repeated symbols, the imagery, because we probably all hear it differently. i also really enjoyed learning that it was kinda musically inspired by jeff and scott's weird love of crate picking records, especially from eastern europe. you can hear the influence in the horns and the saw and odd instrumentation of balkan marches and experimental, improvisational technique.
makes me want to really dig deeper in the elephant 6 catalog again, where i haven't gone much further than dusk at cubist castle
My mistake, perhaps it was the 33 1/3 book about some other band and album that I am mixing up. I'm going to read it!
I got into NMH through the Avery Island album. My senior year roommate were into them. He popped Avery Island into the car CD player some time in the middle of the night during an overnight road trip we took driving back from Louisiana in college. I find it pretty weird that I can remember that specific event 22 years ago. Lyrically and sonically, Avery Island was basically practice for ITAOS.