NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL | IN THE AEROPLANE OVER THE SEA
Never was an album so oddly timeless and placeless despite its American roots than the celebrated indie masterwork of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. It’s nonchalant low-fi aesthetic created a surrealist nostalgia so genuine nothing has since come close to its charm.
The lyrics to the brilliant opening track “King Of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1” are sublime poetry in action. “And your mom would stick a fork right into daddy’s shoulder, and dad would throw the garbage all across the floor, as we would lay and learn what each other’s bodies were for.” The nuances steadily backdrop a story worthy of a famed literary novel. “And your mom would drink until she was no longer speaking, and dad would dream of all the different ways to die, each one a little more than he could dare to try.” As Jeff Mangum’s voice rises into a gorgeous heavenly and chalky register, the song climaxes in one of the album’s most vibrant moments.
“King Of Carrot Flowers Pts 2 & 3” drone like a back alley service for devotees of a saviour that is no doubt coming back one day. The song bursts into a saturated roomy punk jam, juicy as champagne grapes. The mix is overdriven and untamed, almost coming apart at its edges. The album’s title track is an acoustic lament that crackles with an overarching sadness seeped in Magnum’s confident vocal delivery. Horns punctuate the album like stabs in the heart. “Two-Headed Boy” is brash acoustic clamouring, so honest and pure in energy it has to collapse in on itself.
The album plays lyrically with Eastern European choral music, marches, free jazz, and acid folk. Mixing accordion, acoustic guitars, horns, and even singing saws the instrumentation mirrors nothing indie rock was even dreaming at the time. The heavy distortion that lies across the album gracefully enhances the effect of the music through creating richly abrasive textures. Though its a low-fi album in sentiment, the result is triumphant and celebratory. It’s all at once fantastical, wild, beautiful, and unsettling.
References to semen and mountains, ovaries, sisters, brothers, mothers, enemies, and family make for unusual yet lastingly effective lyrics on “Communist Daughter and “Oh Comely.” The acoustic guitars sounds like they were recorded too close to the mic in an attempt fo the engineer to re-adjust his levels for a cleaner take. But that would have been missing the point, and Mangum surely desired pure harmonic distortion to mirror his vision. The natural resonant vibration of his soul is a production technique for which there is no formula.
The last three songs of the album continue to burn in anguish and devotion. The lyrical and melodic genius of “she was born in a bottle rocket 1929…dee dee dee dee de…?” solidifies the album’s devoted indie cred. It’s all a ghostly take on psych-folk influenced by the likes of Anne Frank, Holland, and old time war, laced with frames of family history filtered through a lens of innocence, violence, and disruptive narratives. The album is a punk-folk spirit uncomfortably existing among the living. An apparition, a myth. But one we are gifted with being able to witness.
Its easy to see devotees in indie rock like Bright Eyes and Beirut would take the album’s worldly distorted folk aesthetic to new heights. Over the years In The Aeroplane Over The Sea would gain a cult following as Mangum would struggle with newfound stardom. In the end, it’s critical acclaim set it as a landmark album for all of indie rock, and ranked it as one of the best albums of all time. Mangum immediately became a ghost himself upon its success and the album remains one of the most mysteriously beautiful oddities the world has ever been privileged to receive. “In my dreams you’re alive, and you’re crying.”
The album feels like a warm blanket of nostalgia, foreign yet familiar in a strange way. The scotch and frangelico combination create a warmth that consumes the palate with delight. The dark rum adds sweetness while the walnut bitters add a smokey vibe. The drink is as dense as the saturation on the album.
