Endless Endless: A Lo-Fi History Of The Elephant 6 Mystery

★★★ Adam Clair HACHETTE. £22

Definitive account of Athens, Georgia’s ’90s indie-psych scene.

“We existed in our insular world,” said Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum of Elephant 6, the incestuous underground movement that surfaced in 1990s Athens, Georgia. Clair’s giddy tome mostly succeeds in infiltrating that world, offering intimate perspectives on scene luminaries like The Apples In Stereo, Of Montreal, Olivia Tremor Control and more, while his endearingly gossipy and affectionate tone revels in every internal bust-up and no-budget act of acid-pop lunacy. However, the mysteries within the scene’s mostacclaimed group, Neutral Milk Hotel, remain elusive, not least because Jeff Mangum has refused almost all interviews since their final album, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea,

became a cultural touchstone. Interviews with bandmates and contemporaries compile the most complete account yet of the group’s demise and their leader’s subsequent “creative truancy”, but the enigmatic Mangum and his ongoing silence remain insoluble riddles.