Some Holy Spectacle: Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"

Heil, Mrs. Tambourine Head...?

 

I think I may have figured out some sort of template for this blog.  I hate writing negative reviews for albums, mostly because the process of doing so is much more laborious.  It's just a lot more fun for me to write positive reviews, because then I can really absorb myself into the album, and I don't have to suffer listening through something I don't like multiple times just to analyze it.  So, as it stands, it looks like this blog will be about albums that do weird things to me and my attempt to understand just why they do these things.

And this is the granddaddy of them all.

To be honest, I hadn't thought much about this album in the last couple of years until a late-night acoustic guitar sing-along with some friends a couple of months ago prompted me to go listen to it again.  Suddenly, as I was singing the songs from that record for the first time in forever, apparently doing a pretty good Jeff Mayyy-eeeengum impersonation, and feeling more collegiate than I ever have in my life (take that however you'd like), I was taken back a few years and was instantly reminded of what those songs meant to me.

I was an impressionable fifteen year old with a broken heart and a wealth of hilariously unimportant problems, and amidst the very worst of it all, this album was there.  I don't know why it was this one over any number of other albums that I was into at the time that tend to comfort people in their dire teenage years (Weezer's Pinkerton, The Flaming Lips' The Soft Bulletin, The Arcade Fire's Funeral).  Maybe Aeroplane just happened to be the one that I was playing at the time.  Whatever the reason, it worked, and how couldn't it?  Mangum sang lyrics that were emotional, but with enough abstraction that they never became overbearing or pathetic, at very loud volumes while straining to hit notes that he was just never meant to hit.  It was also a pretty easy and fun album to learn to play on the guitar, so I felt like I was making the songs on this record my own on another level.

And how liberating it was to sing lines like "And we would lay and learn what each other's bodies were for," "God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life," "And she goes and now she knows she'll never be afraid," "But for now we are young/Let us lay in the sun/And count every beautiful thing we could see," "Rings of flowers around your eyes/And I'll love you for the rest of your life."  Hyper-romantic mini-manifestos are one thing, although they become even more powerful when cloaked around bizarre phrases like "Semen stains the mountaintops," "She will feed you tomatoes and radio wires," "And you watched as your brains fell out through your teeth," etc.  And to top it all off, you get these other abstractions that mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people, ("I love you Jesus Christ," and all the Anne Frank references in particular) but when plopped into the album they only add another layer of mystique to the ordeal.  It probably all means something in Mangum's head, and I'm sure it's possible to decipher, although I can't do it, not just because I don't have the profundity to do so but simply because I don't want to.  The lyrics are perfect enough as they are, little whirlwinds of the English language, obtuse observations of natural weirdness wherein can be found carefully constructed declarations of undying love and all that other hoo-hah.  Or something like that.  Contrived?  Perhaps.  But the immense amount of meaning that I've given to these words and that these words have given to me feels so genuine that any contrivance just seems irrelevant.

Naturally, another factor that develops meaning of words is delivery, and Mangum's distinctive vocal performance on the album has been one of the greatest areas of dispute when it comes to dissecting Aeroplane's merits.  We all know how he does it, he'll start off quiet, begin dragging and changing one-syllable words, get really loud and then strain to hit those really high notes (and shockingly, succeeds with all of them, really).  Regrettably, Mangun has basically set the precedent for any hyper-emotional acoustic troubadour, either wailing grade school level lyrics at one and a half tones from the correct pitch (I know I just went on about how it's nice to hear people sing out of tune, but if it's a third-rate carbon copy of the original singing worse lyrics, well, everybody's got their limits), or singing slightly-above-grade school level poetry, but really sensitively (read: lacking testicles).  Unfortunate as this is though, what Mangum has that few or none of his spawn possess is a true organic feel to his voice.  The whole thing sounds spontaneous and authentic, and I don't doubt that most of it was.  If you turn up your speakers at the end of "Oh Comely," you can hear someone yell out "Holy shit!" in the background, apparently impressed that Mangum was able to complete the whole thing in one take.

And this is something that permeates the whole album, this organic quality.  Rob Schneider did a damn fine job producing this record, because the thing really does sound like it's coming from a bunch of guys holed up in some shack in the Pacific Northwest, surrounded by a bunch of instruments bought at yard sales that they've sort of learned how to play in the last year.  I envision Mangum brooding in the corner while the rest of the band tries to figure out which extra instruments they can use to decorate the songs.  With regard to the arrangements, I am a real sucker for slapping on all sorts of weird instruments onto any song, but the same organic quality that cuts through Mangum's voice, again helps the added instrumentation feel genuine and not so gimmicky.

Case in point, "Ghost," which held the title of my favorite song of all time for quite a while is perfect in almost every way.  The build-up is sublime - acoustic guitar meets ultra-loud, distorted fuzz bass, soon to be backed by Jeremy Barnes' rickety drum fills and Scott Spillane's horns.  Then the tempo picks up, Mangum starts wailing and the song drives and pushes along until finally, the whole thing bursts out at the climax, leaving Julian Koster to take the vocal line by means of an angelic singing saw.  It's the apex, really, and it probably wouldn't have worked if one piece of that puzzle was missing.  I'm going to stop before the drool short circuits my keyboard.

The album is sequenced pretty flawlessly as well, blending the solo works with the group efforts seamlessly, moving from something sparse like "Two Headed Boy" to the ornate funeral march of "The Fool" right into the fuzz-blast rocker "Holland, 1945" (I truly feel sorry for you if the "2-1-2-3-4" EXPLOSION that kicks off "Holland 1945" does nothing for you.)  The anthemic instrumental "Untitled" could have very easily kicked the album off nicely, but instead leaves that for the statelier "King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1" and tosses "Untitled" as the second to last song on the album.  The gorgeous "Two Headed Boy, Pt. 2" ends everything, leaving the sound of Mangum putting his guitar down and leaving (right after the final line of the album, "But don't hate her when she gets up to leave") as the album's final impression.

Despite it only being around for eleven years, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea has had varying levels of critical success.  It was released to mixed reviews, but eventually gained extremely high accolades from all around the indie community, quickly elevating Jeff Mangum from "singer of Neutral Milk Hotel" to "indie God."  Right as this was happening, and also certainly due to the immense pressure to follow up Aeroplane (a difficult task for anyone), Mangum disappeared, a move that solved his problem temporarily, but also made him an unfortunate target for the indie paparazzi.  Whenever the poor bastard shows up anywhere, it's news, and I don't doubt at all that he despises it.  Perhaps his recent appearances, though are in response to a bit of backlash that Aeroplane seems to be receiving now that the hype has died down, with criticisms placed on Mangum's vocal delivery, the everything-but-maybe-the-kitchen-sink instrumentation, and most unfortunately, the album's reputation as a cornerstone of the hipster set.

And maybe if I heard the album for the first time now, I'd be a bit jaded, but as the way things go, it will almost certainly stay with me as a remarkable masterwork of modern music.  I wasn't even sure if that would be the case that one night when I was playing these songs on guitar with friends.  I wanted to listen to it when I got back to my dorm, but instead I kept putting it off and eventually kinda forgot about it again.  And then just the other night, I was feeling kind of lousy and went for a drive and put it on.  My doubts were alleviated.  It still does it to me.  Every goddamn time.

I've succumbed to a meme to get this going again.

Hooey, it's been a while.  I'm sorry about this, if you feel that an apology is in order - I'll dole out the lame excuse that things have been getting busy on all sorts of fronts, plus I was flu-ridden for over a week.  But now I'm home on break and I have all the time in the world to update this thing!  I'd like to do it twice before I head back to Cleveland, so consider this the first of those two.

Regrettably, it's a meme.

But it's a pretty nifty one!  You're supposed to just write the names of twenty-five albums that can essentially sum up your life in chronological order.  I'm going to take it a step further an explain briefly how exactly each one has made a significant impact on my life.  Hotcha!  And it works nicely because since this blog is still in its development, you can take this as a sort of "get-to-know-your-blogger" kinda thingy or something like that.

Here we go:

1.  Thriller - Michael Jackson - Age 2/3.  What isn't an impressionable toddler to like about Michael Jackson? (insert joke of your choice/offensiveness here)  He had style, rhythm, the moves, everything.  So I spent hours trying to replicate those dance moves in front of a large mirror in my living room.  This gave me the helpful revelation that I would never be a good dancer, but it also left me with what was the first album to make an impact in my life.

2.  Out of Time - R.E.M. - Age 3.  Mostly just "Losing My Religion," although my God, I was obsessed with that tune.  There I was, at age three, singing "That's me in the corner/That's me in the spotlight/Losing my religion," over and over.

3.  River of Dreams - Billy Joel - Age 4.  What is so often referred to as Billy Joel's worst album happens to be the one I hold nearest and dearest to me.  This was, for some weird reason, the soundtrack to my preschool years.

4.  Junta - Phish - Age 6.  This is where things started to pick up.  My cousin made my dad a cassette copy of Junta for him to listen to and when he put it on, I was the one who got hooked.  It was certainly the combination of album opener "Fee"s bossa-nova rhythms, story about a weasel and lyric, "She took that piece of paper and sliced him on the nipple" (I probably found that hilarious back then, shut up.) that captured me so intently.  Soon that song and eventually the whole album led to what was the official start of the obsessive music-nerdism that I carry with me to this day.  Blame Junta.

5.  Any early/middle period Phish album - Age 6. Truth be told, although I normally tell people that A Picture of Nectar was the first album I really properly owned.  It was most likely the first CD, although the more I think about it, the more I figure that something like Hoist or Rift, which I owned on cassette, came first.

6.  Billy Breathes - Phish - Age 6/7.  This was where the concept of a new release entered my brain.  We received the CD in the mail via the Phish phan club on the day of its release.  That's when the realization hit me that I was one of the first people ever to hear the studio recordings on that album.  Blew my tiny mind.

7.  Tarkus - Emerson, Lake and Palmer - Age 7.  My dad had just received a 4-disc ELP box set from a friend and I heard the sounds of "Tarkus" coming from the computer room.  I walked in, saw that the thing was twenty minutes long and divided into seven sections and became immediately intrigued.  And suddenly, the seventh year of my life was awash with Emerson, Lake and Palmer.

8.  Goodbye Yellow Brick Road - Elton John - Age 8.  Honestly, I don't really remember where I first heard this album or what song exactly turned me on to Elton John, but this was my favorite album of his when I was young.  Yes folks, this teenage hepcat who digs Sonic Youth and the Pains of Being Pure at Heart grew up listening to jam bands, 70s prog and piano pop.

9.  The Beatles (The White Album) - The Beatles - Age 8.  Alright, this makes a little more sense, although what probably will still be a little baffling is that hearing "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" at my dad's friend's house is what finally burst the Beatles bubble for me.  Heard that song, loved it, investigated further, discovered just what the first eight years of my life had been missing.  My first sound manipulation experiments also came with this album.  I ruined the grooves of "Revolution 9" in my determination to make that song(?) even weirder than it is.  Then again, the white cover had a bunch of old phone numbers in red marker on it, so I didn't feel too bad.

10.  Child is Father to the Man - Blood, Sweat and Tears - Age 9ish.  My dad's favorite album.  It rubbed off on me.  Still one of my favorites, and probably the first album to give me a real appreciation of use of horns and strings on a record.  Also furthered my sound manipulation because for some reason one day I decided to play this entire album backwards, manually.  WHY?!

11.  Aqualung - Jethro Tull - Age 9.  I'd already seen Jethro Tull live at this point, although I never fully explored their discography until I was about nine years old.  This was an absolute favorite, although the culmination of my Tull obsession was at a life-changing karaoke performance of the album's title track at my relatives' block party in Central Jersey.  Man, that was still back when people waved lighters!

12.  Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd - Age 10 (roughly).  I remember asking my parents permission before I listened to this one just because I knew Pink Floyd had a reputation for being weird.  But I was given the full go-ahead for this bad boy.  Wish I could go back and listen to this one for the first time again, probably more so than any other album on this list, and I'm not sure why.

13.  Tommy - The Who - Age 11.  At this point, my major musical discoveries were a succession of classic rock bands, marked by some album I'd heard about somewhere or another, and these obsessions would usually last from a few months to a year (as opposed to right now where I just get a bunch of different stuff and try to listen to it all once, at once).  Why Tommy over Led Zeppelin II or Days of Future Passed?  Because I still think the Who are as incredible now as I did back then. (Postscript: You can also replace this with the Kinks' Arthur or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire, although that didn't happen for a few years.)

14.  We're Only in it For the Money - Frank Zappa - Age 12/13.  I'd known about Frank Zappa for many many years at this point, mostly as that weirdo guitar player who did "Joe's Garage," "Muffin Man" and that song about dental floss my dad used to sing to me.  Hearing this one for the first time I guess sort of started me on my second phase of music-listening - my slow descent into weirdness and experimentation.  That and my years-long Frank Zappa album collecting, still leaving him as (far and beyond) the most represented artist in my iTunes library.

15.  OK Computer - Radiohead - Age 14.  You know, I kept seeing all these "Best albums of all time lists" and most of the entries made sense.  Sgt. Pepper's, Dark Side of the Moon, Led Zeppelin IV... I knew all those albums inside out.  But what is this OK Computer thing I keep seeing at number 7?  I had to find out.  And it's a good thing I did; if not I might still think that the only good albums made after 1980 were by Phish, Pearl Jam and Primus... yikes!

16.  Another Side of Bob Dylan - Bob Dylan - Age 15.  I'd tried to give Dylan a chance prior to my sophomore year of high school, but I had a difficult time doing so.  His out-of-tune voice, relatively simple song structures and acoustic strumming hadn't appealed to my prog-addled mind.  Once I gave this record (the earliest Dylan album in the vinyl collection) a spin, suddenly the lyrics jumped right out of me and I found something beautiful in his weary voice.  Also, with my new-found ability to play the guitar, Bob Dylan became the first musician who I really, truly aspired to be.

17.  Franz Ferdinand - Franz Ferdinand - Age 15.  This album essentially taught me that not only was there plenty of good music produced after 1980, but that there was plenty of good music being produced today.  Plus, I got very lucky in that this was the big party album during my sophomore year of high school.  And dear God, it could have been so much worse.

Here, things start to get shaky, because around this time I started making weekly trips to Best Buy and just splurge on music with friends.  This is probably where my "modern" listening era starts, or something like that.

18.  Funeral - The Arcade Fire - Age 15.  A friend of mine bought this due to its rapid accumulation of praise, and upon looking at the packaging, I originally wrote it off as some artsy-fartsty abstract pretentious thing I wasn't going to like very much.  This impression lasted for about forty minutes until we put the record on.  I learned that not only was there good music being produced today, but that following new releases was something I should really start devoting some effort to doing.

19.  In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel - Age 15/16.  Took me a few listens to get into it, but oh boy... this was the big healing album of my emotionally crippling, retrospectively hilarious teenage years.  Typical, but sincere - not to mention that it was the first album (of only two) to knock The Beatles off the number one spot of my non-existent "favorite albums of all time" list.  (Postscript: As it turns out, it's still got 'dem magical healing powers!  For me at least.  I've been wanting to write about this one for a while.  Expect it soon.)

20.  Rain Dogs - Tom Waits - Age 15/16.  Picked this one up on a bit of a whim and gave it a few listens, thought it was interesting, but I didn't really return to it until, for some reason, I almost impulsively decided to explore the rest of Waits' discography.  Still, this is the one that introduced me to my current favorite musician and for that reason alone it is one of the most significant albums of my entire life.

21.  Double Nickels on the Dime - The Minutemen - Age 17.  A friend of mine bought this one for me for my seventeenth birthday.  In doing so, he inadvertently gave me my single greatest jumping point into the underground.  Thanks, Luke!

22.  GodWeenSatan - Ween

23.  Flood - They Might Be Giants

24.  Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

(Age 17-18)

Those three essentially just turned me on to three of my current favorite bands.  There's nothing terribly significant about them in relation to personal events or development really, nor are they my favorite albums from those artists (Those are The Mollusk, Lincoln and Henry's Dream, respectively), but they introduced me to artists who did have some sort of big impact on me, so there.

25.  Mclusky Do Dallas - Mclusky - Age 19.  This one will change each time I look at this.  It's just an album I'm really listening to more than normal at any given time.

So there we go.  That's my life in 25 albums, or something kind of close to it.  Many of those won't end up on any all-time favorites lists, but it would be a crime not to give them their dues, so enjoy it while you can, River of Dreams!

In conclusion, I should have the patience to read over these entries for obvious spelling and grammatical errors.  I'm sure there are some in there.  Maybe I can make a contest out of it!