sandford's Full Review: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea * by Neutral Milk Ho...
"Made in Canada" are the only words you’ll find on the case containing one of the best indie rock albums ever recorded. Too bad, as “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” should carry a warning: “Play this disc at least twice before making any judgments.”
I did, and I thank myself every time Jeff Mangum’s 1998 masterwork of euphoniums, 1940s references, flugelhorns and semen-stained mountaintops slices through my psyche with all the force of a singing saw, another of the many “what is that?” instruments that push this record so far beyond being just a collection of outstanding acoustic songs. I shudder to think that I nearly dismissed “Aeroplane” after playing it once as background music.
Mangum’s lyrics about love, death and confusion combine with otherworldly backing music to forge an atmosphere of mystery and sadness. Is it a poor man’s “Pet Sounds,” then? Not at all; this album sounds so different from just about everything else, including the 1996 Neutral Milk Hotel album “On Avery Island,” that it defies comparison.
The neatly plucked acoustic beginning of “The King of Carrot Flowers Part One” offers no clues about the assault of organs, accordians, horns and banjos to follow. The accordian backing that subtly enters 45 seconds into the song begins a slow crescendo that, despite a few well-timed interruptions, doesn’t let up until about 40 seconds into the final song, “Two-Headed Boy Part Two,” when Mangum’s voice and acoustic guitar ease the disc into a soft, emotionally charged ending.
The first track’s frolicking guitar gives way to an organ drone to open “The King of Carrot Flowers Part Two,” which opens with Mangum professing love for Jesus Christ and sounds nothing like its predecessor. Drum crashes give the tune a sense of urgency before several mysterious, exotic-sounding instruments – I’m not going to pretend I have a clue what many of them are – spin around one another with increasing frequency and whip the song into a frenzy, complete with cymbal crashes and hard-rocking guitar. The “Holland, 1945” 7-inch single, released before “Aeroplane,” shows the album’s tracks and lists this song as “Jesus Christ/Up and Over,” and the two parts couldn’t be more different.
The third track, “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” is one of two that can be cut from the album and dropped into, say, a mix tape for a friend without sounding incomplete or confusing on their own (“Oh Comely” is the other). Acoustic guitars, a pleasant melody and a singing saw back starkly direct, yet darkly unconventional lyrics.
“What a beautiful face I have found in this place that is circling all around the sun,” seems to address love, while “And one day we will die and our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea. But for now we are young; let us lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we can see” clearly is about death and appreciating life while we have it. Mangum doesn’t mince words, yet they come off as more poetic than preachy. “Can’t believe how strange it is to be anything at all” may well refer to that occasional shock we get by simply realizing that we really do exist – a sensation that, sadly, seems to strike less frequently as one gets older.
“Two-Headed Boy” is a mid-tempo, acoustic-based track with a decent melody that’s given much better treatment seven tracks later, in the album closer “Two-Headed Boy Part Two.”
It leads into “The Fool,” a sort of melancholy, psychedelic parade soundtrack written by band member/Elephant 6 collective horns virtuoso Scott Spillane. Although this disc pretty much is the Jeff Mangum Show – the only other track with outside songwriting is “The King of Carrot Flowers Part Two” – Spillane’s contribution builds on the album’s imagery by evoking visions of sad-eyed generals ordering troops to hurry along a path to certain doom, with a bass drum keeping time.
The pace of “Holland, 1945” picks up where the second half of “The King of Carrot Flowers Part Two” left off, a high-speed attack of guitar, fuzz bass, horns and cymbal crashes backing Mangum’s musings about the only girl he ever loved being buried alive in 1945. This leads to the best of the album’s many sudden musical transitions as the white noise of the 78 rpm “Holland, 1945” gives way to the sublime, comforting, 33 rpm “Communist Daughter.”
In the latter, sound effects from many of the album’s more bizarre instruments weave in and out of a swaying, basic guitar-bass melody before Mangum starts singing, and in less than two minutes the album’s mood has progressed from nearly skidding out of control to comfortably numb.
“Oh Comely” continues the slowdown and is, in this writer’s opinion, the album’s only disappointment. Mangum’s vocal emotion, one of the album’s many highlights, doesn’t quite rescue the track from a so-so melody and eight-minute running time. Interestingly, Mangum performed live a companion piece to this song that featured a few similarities, but was upbeat and featured an outstanding melody. It’s called “Oh Sister,” and some of its lyrics actually are interspersed in “Oh Comely’s” printed lyrics in the album jacket. One can only wish Mangum had included “Oh Sister” on this 39-minute album. (It’s worth pointing out that many fans do enjoy “Oh Comely,” and Mangum thought enough of the song in the late 1990s to open a number of concerts with it.)
The acoustic opening of “Ghost” sounds so much like the start of Fleetwood Mac’s “Go Your Own Way” that one half-expects Mangum break into a Lindsay Buckingham tribute. Have mercy, Jeff! He does. Once again, the mood shift from the previous song is dramatic, as Mangum spouts more stream-of-consciousness lyrics about living forever and less obvious topics over an upbeat, mid-tempo backing track. Again, the song builds to a frenzy, ending in an explosion of percussion and guitars. The “One day in New York City, baby, a girl fell from the sky, from the top of a burning apartment building 14 stories high” line is a bit disturbing given recent events.
The untitled 10th track sounds like a companion piece to “The Fool,” but it’s the beautiful “ahhhhh” harmonies throughout the middle of the song, not the crazy instrumentation, that make this the album’s most optimistic-sounding track.
And that sets the stage for the final mood change, as “Two-Headed Boy Part Two” reprises the fourth track’s melody beneath Mangum’s most emotive singing on the album. This song’s simplicity and sadness float a sense of loss and finality, and the final words, “Two-headed boy, she is all you could need … but don’t hate her when she gets up to leave,” can be too difficult to listen to for those of us who have experienced a loss so intense it will haunt us forever.
One actually could apply that closing refrain to this band, which has released nothing in the four years since “Aeroplane” hit the shelves. Singing saw man Julian Koster leads psychedelic-sound-effects outfit The Music Tapes and Scott Spillane plays horns and guitar for a number of Elephant 6 bands.
But what about Jeff Mangum? He recently released “Orange Twin Field Works Vol. 1,” a collection of experimental recordings/sound effects, and contributes to Major Organ and the Adding Machine, a bizarre collaboration derided by some Neutral Milk Hotel fans. He does play and sing backup on current and former Elephant 6 bands’ recordings, most recently Circulatory System’s solid, self-titled release, but says he has no immediate plans to revive Neutral Milk Hotel.
That’s frustrating for the many people whose minds were blown by “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” not just because Mangum has proved to be an incredibly gifted songwriter, but because it prevents us from seeing a band we may have missed during its 㥢s concerts.
If you enjoy this album and want to hear more, “Jeff Mangum Live at Jittery Joe’s,” released in 2001, is the best place to start. It includes a film of the show, a Phil Spector cover and tunes from “Aeroplane” and “On Avery Island,” the next CD worth buying. “On Avery Island” is lo-fi and much less cohesive than its follow-up, yet a few songs are nearly as good as anything on “Aeroplane.” The even more lo-fi, four-song “Everything is” EP, although interesting, can be skipped. If you stumble across the limited-release “Holland, 1945” 7-inch single for less than $20, snatch it. The B-side, “Engine,” is charming, the artwork is beautiful and the record has gained value in recent years, selling for about $18 in mid-2000 and about $30 in mid-2001.
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