Thread: Favorite Albums
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Old 2012.02.28, 06:22 AM   #62
Tokyo Jihad
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#2 In the Aeroplane over the Sea

Neutral Milk Hotel, we really have reached the end of this now haven’t we? The cult album whose popularity and reverence have swollen to meme-ic proportions. Where do I begin, apart from recounting how I built a tower tumbling through the trees? When making my list, where In the Aeroplane over the Sea was going to land was at the top of my mind. How was this album going to measure up alongside albums I grew up with? Alongside a top 10 that has seen little disruption since whenever I last decided to do this. It quickly seemed to belong in the top 10. I decided I’d rather listen to it over Nevermind, over high production albums like Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. I did the eliminations until I was faced between it, The Beatles, and Oasis. I was a bit surprised it was up there with two bands I am absolutely devoted to, where my adoration for Jeff Mangum is merely respectful. I chose The Beatles among the three, but I still had to decide on #2. The simplification of my thought process on deciding between Aeroplane and Morning Glory can best be shown by comparing my two favorite tracks of each: the title track “In the Aeroplane over the Sea” and “Wonderwall.” Both are ballads sung in declaration of love to a girl; a love that screams life or death for both subjects. However, as sweeping as Wonderwall may be, Aeroplane enchantingly fills your head with such vivid, aged, tragic, beautiful visuals. The trumpet, the singing saw, and even Mangum’s nasal voice play like scratched and lost film. Anyone who listens is sure to pick out one lyric in this song (or at least, album) that sticks profoundly with them (mine being: “Can’t believe how strange it is to be anything at all.”)

As I compared the two, I found Aeroplane to be a very (very) mature (What’s the Story?) Morning Glory. All the songs are rather approachable, once coming to terms with the vocals, and even poppy. Just as Oasis fans pack arenas to sing along to “Champagne Supernova” for the hundredth time, so do Neutral Milk Hotel fans in slightly smaller venues. I know not a single person that can control themselves from singing either album start to finish. There are even two instrumentals on each album, along with an epic closer! Of course, once looking past surface, we find many things the Gallagher’s wouldn’t dare touch, but I found the many comparisons between the two very interesting. Comparisons I’m sure neither fan base would admit to their selves.

I wish I could say I was “leet” enough to have had this CD since the millennia, but alas I am a relatively late arrival to its party. I have been aware of this album since then though, I just never put all the pieces together. Since ’99, I had seen the iconic cover in many year-end lists and decade-end lists. However I wasn’t inquisitive enough to read and assumed the album was much older than it was and thought the cover art belonged to a band like Stone Temple Pilots or Blind Melon (hah!) As the decade went on, in a fashion to put Pinkerton to shame, fervor over the album grew and grew on the internet until I had to investigate.

This is one of those albums I don’t think I would have “gotten” before I cracked Bitte Orca. And still not every song revealed itself as readily as the title track or rolling opener “King of Carrot Flowers part 1.” Before I knew it though, it became the only thing I listened to for a month, or was how I felt. The entire album is just a fascinating to listen through, just for the sounds. It all sounds as if it was recorded in the 1910’s behind a circus, but with a fuzzed-out electric bass in the background. Jeff Mangum just pours his heart into the microphone, sometimes singing way out of his range. But the more his voice cracks and tears, the more you believe in the farcical yarns he spins. I think every album on this list is worth a spin of your time, but there are a few that I think are really “must-listens” and this is one of them. Even if it takes a few listens to really crack, I think it’s time worth investing.
The album has elevated from its underground roots to be an album so revered that some people interpret it as a joke. For one thing, the album nearly single handedly set the stage for the next decade of (indie, underground) music. A lot like how Nevermind had set the stage at the start of the 90’s. In fact it was the on the ashes of Nevermind’s platform that Aeroplane was built.

By the late 90’s, the kids that truly embraced Nevermind, and had bought into Mellon Collie had grown up. They were rats who has outgrown their cages and traded them for cubicles for in which to rage. The new kids that inherited that delicious 90’s tapestry…really weren’t of the same mold. In truth these “kids” were my peers; kids my own age. However, this crop of kids misconstrued what it meant to rage like “a rat in a cage” and what Nirvana’s “Rape Me” was really about. Kids wanted something angy-er-er, so up shot bands like Korn, Limp Bizkit, and Slipknot. On the other side of the coin, the more presentable counter-points were becoming bankable again. Demographics shifted younger once more and Backstreet Boys, Britney Spears, and yes my Spice Girls ushered in the era of bubblegum. I’d argue Justin Timberlake probably had more in common with Kurt Cobain than Jonathan Davis did, but clearly the punk ethics that leveled the airwaves in the early 90’s, banked with in the mid 90’s, had sold out. I recall by 1999, good music was becoming more and more difficult to find. No surprise this when I resorted to unearthing CDs like Central Reservation and other obscure acts (for America.) In my introduction to this list, I mentioned that I used to do a weekly top 10 countdown of my favorite songs. 97 and 98 were my butter years doing this. By 1999 though, my top 10’s were becoming less engaging due to me finding less and less music I fancied through the traditional means. I remember one late list including two Oasis songs, two Radiohead songs and something like three Smashing Pumpkins where prior I had enjoyed ten very different selections. But also I was turning more and more to enjoying full albums rather than just individual songs. By summer 2000, I stopped doing these lists entirely.

I was finding less and less through traditional means, implying there were less traditional means available by then. Christmas ’98 I reserved a gift that changed the game. A Diamond Rio PMP300, one of the first portable mp3 players and introduced me to the MP3 and the idea of “free songs on the internet.” A year later came Napster that would fully re-open the music discovery faucets. The mp3 (and Napster) of course helped listeners caught in the mainstream find more underground acts. Though it wasn’t immediately that I discovered it, but the 90’s punk-ethics infused alternative music that I devoured earlier was still alive and evolving underground. For the most part, Jeff Mangum had unwittingly planted the seeds there.

If Kurt Cobain had brought the underground to the fore, with its anti-commercial message and tough to monetize sound, Jeff Mangum returned it to where it came from. In the Aeroplane over the Sea was as revitalizing for the scene as Nevermind was for popular music, breathing life into the sector that had been suffocated by me-too acts, bloated and beached ones, and imposters. “Holland, 1945” didn’t set the world on fire like “Smells Like Teen Spirit” but it did slowly burn. Neutral Milk Hotel begat acts like Arcade Fire, Joanna Newsom, The Microphones, and Deerhunter: arguably a more presentable legacy.

Aeroplane is perfect in a different way than Mellon Collie is. In Mellon Collie, the songs fill each other’s cracks to complete a full experience. For instance “Tales of a Scorched Earth” might not be a song you would regularly queue up, but in between “1979” and “Thru the Eyes of Ruby” you really dig the sequence. For Aeroplane, each song lends itself to the next. While Mellon Collie is an epic of grand proportions and sheer magnitude, Aeroplane is an epic in miniature. While each song doesn’t specifically lead to the rest, even ones advertised as “part 2” they all fit together perfectly to paint a full picture. A picture that is even greater than the sum of its parts.

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is a wonderful record to talk about. It has an old timey sound, yet was extremely forward thinking. Very traditional, but with odd production choices and instrumentation. It’s heart-warming and blunt and tragic, and other arty-farty conundrums. A true 10. I truly feel that my journey through music thus far was leading to this milestone of a record. It has the simplicity of an album like Morning Glory, the challenge of Funeral or Bitte Orca, the rebellious spirit of Doolittle or Nevermind, and the soul-bearing of Central Reservation or, yes, even First Band on the Moon. It may not top the list, but it is a work it likely took the body of this list to truly appreciate. I am sure this album will help me crack into other great albums I’ll soon love as much, hopefully.

We’re at the conclusion! Gosh! Almost a year after sorting this list and reflecting on these twenty (-one) records, I am quite pleased with the results. While I have listened to much new music since then, I feel this list is still a good advertisement of my feelings. Sure there’s a few choices I still second guess (Transmission from the Satellite Heart over Clouds Taste Metallic) but I think I made choices I’m comfortable with. Thank you all very much for reading my list and these essays! I hope you enjoyed them and inspired you to revisit some of your favorites and evaluate just what it is that you like about them so much. As I’m sure you’ve noticed, there is as much tapestry to enjoy that isn’t heard in the notes that greatly amplifies what you do hear. I’d love to hear what albums you enjoy, and why! This list is solid enough to last me a while, but may we all meet again when I get that itch to list. Or more preferably, when you do!
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