Neutral Milk Hotel formed in 1989 as an offshoot of Milk, a high school musical project of singer-songwriter Jeff Mangum,[1] and the band was largely a Mangum solo project in the group's earlier days.

[2] The group was a part of The Elephant 6 Recording Company, a collective of musicians that includes, among others, notable indie rock bands The Apples in Stereo, The Olivia Tremor Control, and Of Montreal.

The band's first studio album, On Avery Island, was released on the independent label Merge, and has sold a relatively high 5,000 copies.

Afterwards, the band began to tour for the first time, and grew to include horns player Scott Spillane, multi-instrumentalist Julian Koster, and drummer Jeremy Barnes.

[3][4][5] Up until 2011's Ferris Wheel on Fire EP, the band had no new releases since In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, though Mangum has said "I don't know what's going to happen, but I certainly want to make music a bigger part of my life in the future than it has been for the last couple of years.