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Home  >  Neutral Milk Hotel  >  In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Neutral Milk Hotel

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

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Rated Member Rating by HomicidalCarrot on 12/01/2007

Nine years have passed since Jeff Mangum, the reclusive cult icon and lead singer of Neutral Milk Hotel, has recorded a true album. Unless you count a live album (actually recorded in 1997) and a field recording of folk music during Mangum's journeys in Bulgaria. The world of music misses a unique talent like his. NMH's previous album, the debut On Avery Island was a very auspicious start. But on Aeroplane, the first album to be a true band LP (Avery Island was mostly him and session musicans) he expands his vision, to make a semi concept album full of distorted drums and guitar, lyrics about Anne Frank and WWII in general, and fabulously warped horn sections. The opening "King of Carrot Flowers Part 1" has a bouncy, mid tempo folk sound, which almost obscures it's lyrics about bad home life "your mom would stick a fork right in your daddy's shoulder." The next song, ... Carrot Flowers Pts 2-3, starts out with Mangum crooning in an over the top fashion about his supposed love of Jesus Christ and suddenly an extremely distorted, twisted cascade of drums, bass, keyboards and horns swirls loud and magestically, with Mangum singing about going "up and over again." The title track, a meloncholic folk tune with lyrics vaguely alluding to war is perhaps NMH's best known song. The strange, sublime rawness of "Two Headed Boy" takes hold, with the short but sweet "The Fool" arriving with a militant style sound. Then charges in "Holland, 1945" the amplified ode to Anne Frank, which Rolling Stone magazine rightfully declared to sound like " a mariachi band mingling with Fugazi at a NASCAR speedway." After the sadly short, quirky, dirty lyric drenched "Communist Daughter" ("semen stains the mountaintops" sings Mangum longingly) the epic 8 minute plus "Oh Comely" enchants in its haunting glory. "Ghost", also WWII and Frank alluding, and the sudden "Untitled" are great songs, but the closing "Two Headed Boy Part Two" is perhaps the best song on the album. Haunting and moving, it's perhaps Mangum's best lyrical and vocal achievement. (Sample line "When we break, we'll wait for our miracle, God is a place where some holy spectacle lies.") If Aeroplane is the last album Jeff Mangum ever records, he should feel proud to have it be so magnificent and original.
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Album Details

  • Year: 1998
  • Label: Merge
  • Producer: Robert Schneider
  • Musicians: Jeff Mangum (Guitar, Bass, Vocals), Jeremy Barnes (Drums), Julian Koster (Saw, Banjo), Scott Spillan (Horns)

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