Neutral Milk Hotel Naomi ( Video by Naomi Yang, made with the bands blessing)

The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel is out now on Merge Records: Naomi Yang on Naomi How do you direct a video for a song that was written about you The first member of Neutral Milk Hotel I met was saw player Julian Koster. Our bands were each playing the psychedelic Terrastock festival, and Julian approached me like a mischievous sprite, just as he appears onstage. We want you to have our record, he said. The song Naomi is about you. I was charmed by the album and by the band in all its raucous joy, but wasnt sure about the namesake song. The lyrics seemed sweet but disquietinga fan letter with a dark edge. Then, years later, in anticipation of a retrospective box set release, I made a music video for Naomi with the blessing of the band. Neutral Milk Hotel had by then become enormously popularand had probably received a fair amount of obsessive fan letters themselves. I thought about taking back ownership of a fans infatuati