Grammys 2024: Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum Lands First-Ever Nomination

The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel is nominated for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package at the 2024 Grammy Awards. The officially recognized nominees are the collections’ art directors: Daniel Murphy, Mark Ohe, and Neutral Milk Hotel bandleader Jeff Mangum. It’s the first time that Mangum has ever been nominated for a Grammy Award.

Mangum, Murphy, and Ohe will face off against the art directors behind For the Birds: The Birdsong Project, Ngọt’s Gieo, and the deluxe editions of Bo Burnham’s Inside and Lou Reed’s Words & Music, May 1965. Last year’s Grammy Award for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package went to the art directors behind the Grateful Dead’s In and Out of the Garden: Madison Square Garden ’81, ’82, ’83.

The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel includes Neutral Milk Hotel’s two studio albums (1996’s On Avery Island and 1998’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea), the band’s 1993 Everything Is EP, and more. A press release for the box set described it thusly:

The work has always come together subconsciously for Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum, even this box set. For years, Mangum collected images for an art box of sorts—would it be a Joseph Cornell–style assemblage? An experimental board game? Only time would tell. In the end, it became a discography-spanning compendium of his musical universe that still left a few treasures floating around in the musical ether.

Jeff Mangum has largely stayed out of the public eye since Neutral Milk Hotel concluded their reunion tour in 2015. These days, when he does interact with his fans, it comes in the form of handmade drawings that he sells online. One drawing even led to some speculation that a new album could be on the horizon. Still, no new music has materialized, but Mangum did publicly endorse Senator Bernie Sanders for president in 2020.

Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package

Bo Burnham – Inside: Deluxe Box Set
Lou Reed – Words & Music, May 1965 – Deluxe Edition
Neutral Milk Hotel – The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel
Ngọt – Gieo
Various Artists – For the Birds: The Birdsong Project

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