In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel

Neutral Milk Hotel
In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
1999
Indie
Merge

1. The King Of Carrot Flowers (Part 1)
2. The King Of Carrot Flowers (Part 1 & 2)
3. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
4. Two-Headed Boy (Part 1)
5. The Fool
6. Holland, 1945
7. Communist Daughter
8. Oh Comely
9. Ghost
10. Untitled
11. Two Headed Boy (Part 2)
(Also included is a 500x500 album cover .jpeg)

And when we break
We’ll wait for our miracle
God is a place where some holy spectacle lies
And when we break
We’ll wait for our miracle
God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life.
Two-headed boy
She is all you could need
She will feed you tomatoes
And radio wire
And retire to sheets safe and clean
But don’t hate her when she gets up to leave

"Two-Headed Boy (Part 2)"

Along with uploading this album, I have a few apologies to make. One is that I have been slacking on posts. This one is a few days late, and the last one was about a week late. Mostly because I've been listening to a lot of new stuff that I don't own yet and have had a hard time deciding what to upload. And the second thing is that I have gotten into a bad habit of uploading classic albums instead of more obscure stuff. I posted Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven, OK Computer, and Thriller all one after another. All very hyped and very celebrated pieces of work that I am the thousandth person to blog about. This album is absolutely no break from that trend. But those of you who haven't heard of it, you can now crawl out of your rock you must be living under.

There have been so many things said about In The Aeroplane Over The Sea that no matter what I say, I won't be the first one to say it. It's definitely one of the most praised albums of all time, and it definitely lives up to a good deal of the hype. All of it? Probably not. But this is a great record. What it all boils down to is Jeff Mangum's visionary songwriting. The lyrics mean both everything and nothing, making little literal sense other than general ideas, but perfectly convey emotion, dreams, and thoughts in a very universal way. The words personify being in love, mourning a death, traveling the world, being in the middle of a war, and a thousand other states of mind that I don't have the energy to get into at the moment.

The music is what is now commonly associated with the word "indie," but I think of it as really aggressive folk. All the songs are focused around an acoustic guitar playing mostly open chords, but the arrangements are huge and, according to the liner notes, incorporate over 25 different instruments, including accordion, trumpet, organ, shortwave radio, fugelhorn, zanzithophone, and bowed banjo. That sounds like it would come together to make a really scatterbrained style of music, but Neutral Milk Hotel's overall sound and feel has become a staple in the music scene. They've heavily influenced ridiculous amounts of people, including my favorites: Okkervil River and Modest Mouse.

I personally am a big fan of the way the songs are mapped on the album. The first two tracks are 3 parts of a larger picture, "The King Of Carrot Flowers." Also, "Two-Headed Boy (Part 1)" is actually continued by "The Fool," which might has well be a part of the Two-Headed Boy saga. "Untitled" is basically a continuation of "Ghost," and could very well be called "Ghost (Part 2)." And to close out the album, there is "Two-Headed Boy (Part 2)" which starts as a very different song and slowly transitions into a reprise of the theme, but not exactly bringing closure to the album, leaving everything very ambiguous.

I like what I did with that. In fact, if I had to describe this album in one word, it would be exactly that: "ambiguous." You'll like it.

Click here to download (83.86 MB)

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