By DECLAN HERTEL Staff Writer
Everyone has a piece of art that speaks to them like no other, and for many people, that work is their favorite music album. There are few more potent ways to learn about who someone is at heart than to listen to their favorite album. Just by knowing that a piece of music speaks to them on some deeper level allows you to connect to them through the music.
This week marks 17 years since the release of my favorite album, Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” released Feb. 10, 1998. It is everything I love about music, and one of only two albums to ever make me tear up (the other being Cage the Elephant’s “Melophobia”). It is heartbreaking, scary, beautiful, and strange.
And I believe it to be perfect.
The album can best be summed up as “absolutely fearless.” Jeff Mangum, the reclusive genius behind the band, clearly just did not give a damn if anyone liked the record, electing to be completely honest and let the work speak for itself.
All the songs carry an urgency of spirit, a sense that he had to get these words and melodies out of his body right now lest he collapse in on himself. His voice cracks and wails, his lyrics are nigh impenetrable on the first listen, and the songs are musically simple with no frills and a lot of lowfi energy. The drums blast, the bass is fuzzed within an inch of its life, and the guitar tracks clip all over the place.
One gets the sense that when songs like the raucous “Holland, 1945,” the band purposefully pushed their equipment right up to the breaking point.
The songs themselves are simple and unpretentious, using simple chords and melodies with unbridled passion and energy. All the musicians on the record are self-taught, including some who learned instruments specifically for recording this record, and this dedication is apparent all through the album.
Upon deeper listening, one finds the method to all the madness: the record is a concept album about plant-like people, a two-headed fetus in a jar, Mangum’s own life, and Anne Frank.
It expresses the rage, hope, loneliness, despair, sexuality, sensitivity, fear,
and love of these strange characters as their worlds change and go up in flames around them.
The whole album lays out an atmosphere of darkness, but within that darkness there is hope for these doomed misfits that they might find love and comfort in their unique existence.
There is apprehension about the future, but because of this uncertainty, we must now “lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we can see,” as Mangum sings on the title track.
“Aeroplane” speaks to me like no other record ever made. It would be impossible for me to articulate exactly why that is, so I’ll settle for this: please seek this record out. Even 17 years after its release, I could not possibly give “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” a high enough recommendation.
