# 1 In the Aeroplane Over the Sea - Neutral Milk Hotel
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is one of the greatest albums I have ever had the pleasure of listening to. Nothing will change that. And here’s the beautiful thing about this, you can disagree. You can say that it’s completely overhyped and overrated and you can be right but music, much like life, is subjective and knowing that, nothing can take away the admiration and love I have for this project.
I don’t always feel the need to defend my position but this album is a curious case. In the Areoplane Over the Sea is one of the most, if not the most, notorious albums on the internet because of its position as one of the most, if not the most, famous indie albums ever made. That fact ultimately changes how if you are going to try to get into the album now. It has these expectations levied against it, whether you initially want the album to be great or to suck. And that is part of why I put it on the classics list, because it is an album whose fame will most certainly affect the way you listen to it.
However, I was lucky enough to hear the album before being introduced to any of the baggage. I heard it at an early time in my life, a time when I was still starting Infamous on ps3, when I stilled played for the same soccer team I joined in second grade, when I still thought that my phone was unable to send texts (a wonderful story, the first time I ever got texting on my phone, I did not know that I had to delete messages. I was actually texting a girl I had a crush on when I stopped getting anymore texts (it cut off mid conversation) and I thought she had gotten mad and stopped talking to me. And for the next year and a half, I was simply convinced that I just never got a text from any person ever, only possible because I had about zero friends at the time. Never saw or heard from the girl again but I do get texts now so it’s a net win for me in the long run). My musical palate was different back then, too. I was past the pop punk phase, into heading toward a feaux-deep, “this is so deep” phase. The majority of my library were bands like The Strokes and The Arctic Monkeys, mostly poppy, modern rock. Lines like, “I’d probably still adore you with your hands around my neck/ or I did last time I checked” were the peak of poetic potential.
Needless to say, I was totally unprepared to appreciate, or even like, Neutral Milk Hotel the first time I heard it. It was shown to me the way almost every album back then was, by my older brother Kiet. He walked into the living room while I was playing the aforementioned PS3 game, Infamous (a great game and also the first game I ever 100% completed so it will always hold a special place in my heart) and told me that he had just heard one of the best albums he heard in a while. “Everything runs together and it’s just so good,” he said, and since we were both raised by a dad who worshiped the track seven through sixteen run on the Beatle’s Abbey Road the same way he worshipped the Buddha (both are unfathomably groundbreaking in their respective fields and that fact was ingrained in both of us as kids), so the fact that the tracks ran together instantly necessitated a listen. I made him burn me a CD, because back then we weren’t allowed to use the computer too late (though I often did to play League of Legends because I was probably addicted and also lonely and thirteen or fourteen like, that’s kind of the point of being that age) and played the album for the first time on my CD player alarm clock.
I don’t remember my initial reaction but I also don’t remember hating or loving the album. I remember disliking Jeff Magnum’s voice, which made sense seeing how I was a stupid petulant shitbaby who knew nothing of the world used to singers like Alex Turner and Julian Casablancas, guys whose smooth voices sounded like they were made for music. I also remember being thrown off by the music, it was strange and folky but it also had horns and big grand moments which I thought wasn’t supposed to be happening together and ultimately I was confused. I was also intrigued and, most importantly, I was totally incapable of putting the album down. I was entranced, it was 1 AM and I was mindlessly eating the Spicy Nacho Doritos that was In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.
It’ been over half a decade since that first listen and I can confirm that I do really really fucking love this album. From the first those opening guitar strums to the crumpling of paper that sounds the end of the album, there is nothing that I can bring myself to dislike. Sure, there are a few low points, the instrumental tracks of Fool and Untitled being some and the song Ghost being another. But even these tracks are ones I adore and fit the album perfectly well. Without the long droning horns on Fool, the quick cut and burst of energy at the beginning of Holland, 1945 isn’t as pronounced. Without Untitled we don’t get the haunting introduction of Two – Headed Boy (Part 2) that is cut through and dissipated by Jeff Magnum’s nasally, desperate voice, an effect that gives the final song a sense of clarity and bareness that the other tracks don’t have. And those are the weaker tracks. There is so much this album does right. The music is everything and everywhere, it’s galloping guitar and these grand horns and bombastic drums but then there’s lonely, acoustic guitar with these quieter, tame horn and spirits swirling in the background then the swirling turns into a roar and threatens to swallow everything then, oh shit is that bagpipe what’s happening. The sounds are confusing and can be a mess but they are beautifully constructed and layered and are accompanied by Magnum’s songwriting which is just impossibly insane. If we take the “level” of fiction theory that I have been running with that pictures the amount of fantasy, the level of separation from reality, as vertical height, most work I enjoy is right at telephone wire level. It’s high up, higher than I’ll ever reach but it’s nice to know that if I had to throw something up there I probably could. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is soaring among the birds, below the clouds but untethered to reality by any measurable standard. They are hopeful and sweet and sexual yet desperate and sad and scared all at the same time, all the time being haunted by the memory of Anne Frank, whose diary shook and haunted Magnum throughout most of this album. Just look at Two Headed Boy (Part 1) to see the mood the album creates: “Two headed boy/ There’s no reason to grieve/ The world that you need is wrapped in gold silver sleeves/ Left beneath Christmas trees in the snow/ And I will take you and leave you alone/ Watching spirals of white softly flow/ Over your eyelids and all you did/ Will wait until the point when you let go.” I previously described as Magnum’s voice as desperate and that’s true in different ways on the album. Sometimes, as it is in the passage above, it’s a quiet desperation, a prayer or birthday wish, and sometimes, like the “Say what you want to say” on oh comely, it is biting and bone-chilling, nasty in its sadness.
And before I go I just want to talk about the best song on the album and the rare song that I think is a six star, Two Headed Boy (Part 2). The song does everything that the album does as a whole but at the top level. “Daddy please here this song that I sing” (desperation), “Long ago wrapped in sheets warm and wet” (sexual), “And in my dreams you’re alive-” (happy, hopeful) “and you’re crying” (sad again). “God is a place where some holy spectacle lies” is a line that pushes me further and further into my deep interest in Christianity and understanding how so many people in this world have grown up in while also being a line that haunts my bones until I hear “God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life” and every last muscle of my heart slows to a crawl as it waits for the last lines. “Two headed boy, she is all you could need/ she will feed you tomatoes and radio wires/ and retire two sheets safe and clean/ but don’t hate her when she gets up to leave.” Then Magnum leaves and you are left to wait in the dark and quiet.
You can disagree with everything I just said and be right. In that case thank you for reading. You can think that everything I read into is just part of the problem of the cult surrounding this album and in that case I thank you for getting this far. But at the end of the day, music is subjective and based off what it does for me. What it does is makes me love music. I will enjoy every moment on this album for the rest of my life.
