Like their Elephant 6 labelmates and kindred spirits Olivia Tremor Control's Music From the Unrealized Film Script, Dusk at Cubist Castle, Neutral Milk Hotel's debut, On Avery Island, is an inscrutable concept album, a chronicle of an insular world told in a remarkably universal language. A fuzzy masterpiece of experimental lo-fi recording, the album wraps its ragged pop songs in ribbons of loops, marching-band squawks, and Casio noodling; the opener, "Song Against Sex," is as much a manifesto as a kickoff, a self-propelled marvel hopped up on rapid-fire wordplay and a stunningly ramshackle melody punctuated by bloated trombone moans. Throughout the record, Jeff Mangum's wheels threaten to fly off at any time -- his songs are cryptic and crazed, his ideas fast and furious, and together they force the home-recording concept out of the basement and into a brave new world

2xLP

1 Song Against Sex 3:40
2 You've Passed 2:53
3 Someone Is Waiting 2:31
4 A Baby for Pree 1:21
5 Marching Theme 2:58
6 Where You'll Find Me Now 4:04
7 Avery Island / April 1st 1:48
8 Gardenhead / Leave Me Alone 3:13
9 Three Peaches 4:01
10 Naomi 4:53
11 April 8th 2:47
12 Pree-Sisters Swallowing a Donkey's Eye 13:49