From the ashes of a band called Synthetic Flying Machine, Olivia Tremor Control was born, with an original line-up of Will and Bill on guitar and bass and Jeff on drums. Around 1995 Jeff decided to leave the group to focus on his own songs. A year of intensive songwriting (some of it accomplished, according to Jeff, while he was living in a haunted closet!) in Denver, Colorado with Rob Schneider at his Pet Sounds studio resulted in his debut album, On Avery Island, released in 1996, which was mostly Rob and Jeff playing Jeff's songs with a few helpful friends. Jeff eventually expanded the line up of Neutral Milk Hotel and in 1998 released what many consider the band's (and indeed, the Elephant Six Collective's) defining album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
The relative success of the album in addition to the pressures of being suddenly thrust into the spotlight took its toll on Mangum, who disbanded Neutral Milk Hotel in 1998 after a tour in support of their latest album. Jeff has kept out of the public eye since then (although not without rabid fans speculating on his whereabouts), rarely if ever playing acoustic sets and concentrating more on his recorded sound and music collages. Most recently he released a compilation of field recordings of Bulgarian folk music called Orange Twin Field Works Vol. 1 in the summer of 2000, followed by a live album on the Orange Twin label, Live at Jittery Joe's. The set was recorded in 1997 and was put out to squash the exhorbitant sums that Neutral Milk Hotel live albums were selling for on eBay. The cd features a Quicktime movie of the concert performance, but Mangum is backlit and cannot be seen throughout the video.
On August 2nd, 2005, Jeff Mangum joined Olivia Tremor Control onstage at New York's Bowery Ballroom to sing lead vocals on their songs I Have Been Floated and Shaving Spiders. Accounts say that he was wiping back tears; afterwards, he was pulled to the floor by OTC member Julian Koster and then dogpiled by the rest of the band. He was wearing a baseball cap and a blue button down shirt.
On November 17th, 2005, Jeff Mangum joined Elf Power, another former Elephant Six band, onstage at New York's Knitting Factory for the final chorus of only one song, The Arrow Flies Close, leaving the stage immediately afterwards.
Gardenhead
Jeff Mangum Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Around your knees that crackle into the dark
Like a walk in the park, like a hole in your head
Like the feeling you get when you realize you're dead
This time we ride roller coasters into the ocean
We feel no emotion as we spiral down to the world
And I guess it's worth your time
Because there's some lives you live
It gets hard to explain
The gardenhead knows my name
Leave me alone,
For you know this isn't the first time
In fact this is twice in a row
That the angels have slipped through our landslide
And filled up our garden with snow
And I don't wish to taste of your insides
Or to call out your name through my phone
For the glory boys at your bedside will love you
As long as you're something to own
Follow me through a city of frost covered angels
I swear I have nothing to prove
I just want to dance in your tangles
To give me some reason to move
But to take on the world at all angles
Requires a strength I can't use
So I'll meet you up high in your anger
Of all that is hoping and waiting for you
The lyrics of "Gardenhead" are abstract and surreal, which leaves them open to interpretation. The opening lines describe something crackling in the dark, which is the sound of beads that wrap around knees. It's unclear what these beads symbolize, but it could be interpreted as a metaphor for the fragility of life, and the sound they create is reminiscent of death. The imagery continues with a roller coaster that spirals down to the world, a metaphor for the tumultuous emotions within the singer. He acknowledges that life is full of experiences that we leave behind and some that we take with us. The final line of the verse, "the gardenhead knows my name," is possibly a reference to an individual who has a deep understanding of the natural world: someone who knows the secrets of growth and life.
The second verse offers another series of surreal images. The singer pleads to be left alone because the angels have come again, filling up the garden with snow. The snow could represent depression, which numbs the emotions and the gardenhead, a metaphor for the subconscious mind. There's an underlying sense of creeping anxiety throughout the song. The final lines express longing and a desire to be with someone. The singer asks the subject to follow him through a city of frost-covered angels, as if he's searching for something pure and angelic. He admits that he has nothing to prove, and all he wants is to dance in her tangles, to find a reason to keep going.
Line by Line Meaning
There are beads that wrap
Around your knees that crackle into the dark
Like a walk in the park, like a hole in your head
Like the feeling you get when you realize you're dead
The crackling beads wrapped around the knees feel like walking in a park but also like a hole in the head that makes you feel dead inside.
This time we ride roller coasters into the ocean
We feel no emotion as we spiral down to the world
And I guess it's worth your time
Because there's some lives you live
And some you leave behind
We ride roller coasters into the ocean without feeling anything as we spiral down to the world, but it's worth it because we have to leave some lives behind.
It gets hard to explain
The gardenhead knows my name
Explaining the feeling is tough, but gardenhead knows me better than anyone else.
Leave me alone,
For you know this isn't the first time
In fact this is twice in a row
That the angels have slipped through our landslide
And filled up our garden with snow
Don't bother me because angels have filled up our garden with snow twice.
And I don't wish to taste of your insides
Or to call out your name through my phone
For the glory boys at your bedside will love you
As long as you're something to own
I don't want to consume you, call you or be loved by others who just want to own you.
Follow me through a city of frost covered angels
I swear I have nothing to prove
I just want to dance in your tangles
To give me some reason to move
But to take on the world at all angles
Requires a strength I can't use
So I'll meet you up high in your anger
Of all that is hoping and waiting for you
I want to dance with you and follow you through a city of angels, but I cannot take on the world by myself, so I'll meet you up high where you're angry and waiting for something better.
Writer(s): JEFF MANGUM
Contributed by Jeremiah H. Suggest a correction in the comments below.