Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane over the Sea
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Music Reviews of In the Aeroplane over the Sea
Music Review: A unique and interesting album
Rating: 5 Stars
Neutral Milk Hotel's sophomore effort "In the Airplane Over the Sea" is a distinctly unique album that should both surprise and entertain its listener. It's somewhat abstract, and ambitious, but not overly challenging, so it should prove easily assessable to an open-minded listener.
"In the Airplane over the Sea" has ten tracks, but as concept albums go, it is best listened to as a whole. Each song flows effortlessly into the next, to create a coherent whole, sort of like the second side of the Beatles "Abby Road."
"In the Airplane over the Sea" jumps back and forth from acoustic numbers, to garage rock, to full marching band arraignments-complete with trumpets, organs, a trombone, a saxophone, and various other instruments. While this ambitious arraignment may have easily produced a disjointed sounding album, that would fall under its own weight, Neutral Milk Hotel pulls it off with surprising ease. The acoustic numbers are simple and straightforward, yet interesting and well-written. The full-band numbers sound sort of like Mudhoney meets a marching band. While the band and its guest musicians are not technically brilliant, they sound tight and invigorated. The offbeat eclectic nature of the album should keep the listener interested and always guessing what will happen next, even if you have heard it multiple times before.
Guitarist/songwriter Jeff Mangum should be credited for his vision, craftsmanship, and successful merging of orchestration, garage rock, and acoustic numbers.
The lyrics are equally abstract. They sound like fragments of thoughts, scattered about, like bedroom poetry-yet they never sound pretentious or overly abstract. Even if you don't know exactly what they mean, you'll get the gist of what was said.
This album could be appreciated as background music, or with concentrated listening-because there is a lot going on, and you'll probably pick up things that you didn't get the first time around.
Music Review: A Truely Amazing Piece of Art
Rating: 5 Stars
Neutral Milk Hotels album In An Aeroplane Over the Sea is the most amazing album i have ever heard. This album truley goes beyond music and enters the realms of a religious experiance. The album is a euphoric mix of folk guitar, something that sounds oddly like a high school band and some strange and wonderful lyrics that seem to have extremely deep meaning that in most cases none but Jeff Mangum himself could possibley understand.The album begins with the gorgeuos and rather twisted King of Carrot Flowers Pt.1 an intimetly simple, as is a common theme on the album, track that moves on seamlessly into The King of Carrot Flowers Pts. two and three in which Pt. one evolves into an almost fast paced rock song with wonderfully loud and simple drumming.
The title track is also a high point of the album. It is one of the few songs when there is no doubt what Jeff Mangum is talking about even though he approaches it in his signature strange way.
Communist Daughter and Oh Comely are two of the more amazing tracks on the cd. Communist Daughters only flaw is that perhaps there is not enough of it. It also displays Mangums amazing voice for he manages to make even lyrics like "semen stains the mountain tops" sound beutiful. However what communist daughter lacks in length is made up for entirely by the four chord magic of Oh Comely.
Amidst all these amazing songs the greatest of them all would have to be Two-Headed boy Pt. 2. Musicly and especially lyrically this song is the peak of the album. The emotion in the song is liable to leave you flat on your back and the fact that in the dying seconds of the album you can hear mangum put down his guitar and leave seems to put the perfect stopper in this small bottle of perfection in todays music world.
This album is a must for anyone and everyone. I feel truely sorry for anyone who hasn't been touched by its magic and if you can't appriciate this album then there may be no hope left for you.
Music Review: Indie/alternative brilliance...
Rating: 5 Stars
It's frustrating to think that this was and will be Neutral Milk Hotel's last real full LP they recorded. That being said however, it's not hard to see why Mangum decided to call it quits. It would be incredibly hard to catch the brilliance he and his band caught in this album.
In this album, Mangum took the age old ideas of folk, meshed it with trippy lyrics, oddball introspection, added some unusual musical instrumentation (such as the musical saw), and put in a pinch of punk just for good measure. This formula is carried through the entire album and amazingly never gets old, not even after many, many listens. Mangum's voice, while it is a bit nasaly at times, holds the songs together as he strains to reach notes he was never meant to. But this really just adds to the entire tone of the album. He spits out his stream-of-consciousness lyrics like Syd Barrett used to do in the 60's and 70's, only without the insanity (one would think).
"In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" and "Two Headed Boy Pt.1 & 2" in particular are ambiguous works of introspective art. What the lyrics mean are anyone's guess. If you read about Mangum in interviews and articles you'll see that all he wants is for people to see the world in a different way, and with lyrics like "the dogs dissolve and drain away" he hits his mark. It would be very trippy if it weren't so heartfelt.
It's hard to write a review with an album that has so much to do with feeling. The best I can tell any skeptics that aren't sure what to think of this album is to just try and imagine the lyrics. Stop trying to relate it to someone or something and just actually listen to them, and also hear how honest and heartfelt Mangum is in delivering them. This is a folk album at it's core, but for anyone willing to listen and actually HEAR the music, HEAR the different instruments, HEAR the lyrics and realize how well it has all been brought together, you'll realize that this is actually a work of art.
Music Review: A Beautiful and Important (if somewhat overrated) album
Rating: 4 Stars
When I first heard In The Aeroplane Over the Sea, I never could have imagined that it would be as influencial as it obviously is. I've talked to a number of people who are quick to name it in their top five albums of all time, but I can't quite understand the fanatacism that endorses the album.
It starts off amazingly, and continues to be incredible up to "Two Headed Boy." From that point on the album significantly (and incrementally) goes downhill, but it reaches quite a height before it does.
The vocals that front the music are some of the most unique and expressive found in this kind of music... which comes across as something like a cross between acoustic-singer-songwriter and flamboyant orchestration. The songs soar in a stripped down way, and are propelled by (mostly) poignant lyrics. The songs can be inspirational and uplifting while being simultaneously heart-wrenching when it wants to be, and it all works...
It just loses steam. The vocals, as expressive and unique as they are, started to grate on me after a while. I can take the album in segments, but listening to it all the way through gets tiresome for me. The second half of the album is primarily dominated by comparatively minimal acoustic songs, and it feels a little detatched from the mystery and grandiosity of the first half.
All that aside, it's still a great album, and it deserves a great deal of the praise that's been heaped upon it. It has influenced countless musicians since the album dropped, while the band dissapeared without a trace off the face of the planet.
There's something intriguing about that enigmatic drive behind the music. It is intensely emotional and yet guarded in a variety of ways. If you want to hear something different and authentic, pick up the album. There's something great going on in this music, and it refuses comparisons to other bands, as much as countless other musicians have bitten off its style.
Music Review: Astounding
Rating: 5 Stars
I was able to, ahem, OBTAIN all of the songs from this album, with the exception of "two-headed boy pt. 2" several months ago from a now-defunct (essentially) website. I'm not in the habit of music piracy, but all I'd ever heard from this band were the 30 second tidbits above and they sounded intriguing, but awfully STRANGE. I didn't want to throw 15 bucks at something I was going to listen to once. That being said, I just bought this CD just to obtain that one last song, after buying "on Avery Island" and some bootlegged live recordings. This is simply one of the strangest, catchiest, smartest, and most beautiful albums you'll ever hear. Most psychodelic music that I have heard is strange and abstract to the point of being boring or unlistenable; this album manages to meld strong emotional themes out of fantastical lyrics. The best example of this is undoubtly "Oh Comely", which builds in intensity and pure dread out of lyrics like "soft silly music is meaningful, magical... the movements were beautiful, all in your ovaries..." and ends with probably the most crushing final line I've ever heard. It's imagery on par with faulkner, and I don't give that compliment lightly. Yet this is not an album just for "lyric nerds" like myself; the soul of the album is pure, raw emotion. I won't waste time and review space to harp on the common "why do people listen *N'Sync when this is out there?". The plain fact is that many people are not going to "get" this album, and not because they're dumb, but because they look for something out of music that this doesn't give them, and there are things that it won't, like a crystalline singing voice or, frankly, uplifting themes. But I still suggest that everyone check it out, because for that one person out of ten who will be into it, it will be nothing less than life-altering. Yes, I paid 16 bucks for one song. And it was worth every penny.