Not only my favorite album of 1998, but my favorite album. Period. To me, it's perfect in every single way possible. Catchy, lyrical, layered and beautiful. From the opening "King of Carrot Flowers," In the Aeroplane Over the Sea shifts from acoustic folkiness to loud, fast punk rock with little or no warning. It features a noisy horn section and a dreamy singin' saw, all rolled into a package that does a credible job of blending Sgt. Pepper with early 90's lo-fi. Aeroplane is a veritable manifesto of the different ways to make pop music. Whether it's the somber title track, the haunting "Two-Headed Boy" or the frenetically rambunctious "Holland, 1945" (one of my favorite songs of all time), the album ebbs and flows between brilliance and madness -- which, in frontman Jeff Mangum's world are inherently interchangeable.
Magnum writes songs that read like bad dreams. He inherits a world of cannibalism, elastic sexuality and freaks of nature. We can only assume he likes it there. It is a spiritually motivated work conceptually based on the beauty to be found in the horrific fate of Anne Frank. During live performances, including the one released under the title Live at Jittery Joe's, Mangum has described some of the songs off this album as based on urgent, recurring dreams he had of a Jewish family during World War II.
Sadly, any new material from Neutral Milk Hotel is all but impossible. Thankfully, we have the glory of Aeroplane, an album that only comes along every so often, when a group of artists create something so singular that it continues to find new appreciators each and every day.
Key tracks: All of them.
Next week: 1999
Hint: Girl. Church. Ace. Riot. Baby.
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