As previously reported, Merge has just reissued Neutral Milk Hotel's two albums, 1996's On Avery Island and 1998's stone classic In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, on 180-gram vinyl.

To mark the occasion, the folks at Merge have posted two live Neutral Milk Hotel videos on Merge's blog. They were filmed at New York's Knitting Factory in 1998. We aren't sure if these videos are entirely new, but we've never seen them before, and they're certainly worth a view regardless.

In those two videos, which you can watch below, Jeff Mangum plays "Two-Headed Boy" and "April 8th" with the sort of fearsome intensity you rarely see from any performer, in any genre. Even without his band behind him, he wails everything at full-force, and the look in his eye seems like it could knock over mountains. Even on a tiny YouTube window 11 years later, it's something to behold.

"Two-Headed Boy":

"April 8th":