Indie’s Salinger

Last month, reclusive indie singer Jeff Mangum released a vinyl-only box set collecting nearly everything ever made by his former band, ’90s cult darlings Neutral Milk Hotel. The set — which has no title — includes rare demos and B-sides, a boon for fans who’d been trading bootlegs for years. But this wasn’t just another musician cashing in on past hits. For starters, Neutral Milk Hotel never really had hits: The band released only two albums in the late ’90s, and just as it started finding an audience, Mangum more or less disappeared, shunning the spotlight for nearly a decade. Mangum is finally playing again — solo shows with only his trademark warbly voice and emphatic acoustic strumming.

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Ahead of two hotly anticipated shows at the Lincoln Theatre, we offer a five-song Mangum primer:

“Song Against Sex”
This first track on NMH’s first album, 1996’s “On Avery Island,” introduces the band’s fuzz-rock edge — all distortion, gypsy horns and Mangum’s soulful caterwaul.

“Everything Is”
Released in 1994, Neutral Milk Hotel’s first single was a rallying cry for the seminal Elephant 6 collective of imaginative psych-pop bands in Athens, Ga. Long out of print, it’s included in the new box set.

“In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”
This title track from the band’s 1998 second album (which has become an indie classic) contains some of Mangum’s most darkly elegant lyrics: “When we meet on a cloud, I’ll be laughing out loud,” he reassures a doomed love.

“Holland, 1945”
On this track from “Aeroplane,” inspired by “The Diary of Anne Frank,” Mangum ponders the horrors of war: “The world just screams and falls apart.”

“Themselves”
Mangum serenaded Occupy Wall Street protesters at Zuccotti Park in October with this 1984 classic from California hard-core punkers the Minutemen. It’s unavailable on record but is on YouTube.