After a long period spent not listening to it, I listened again to Neutral Milk Hotel’s masterpiece, In an Aeroplane Over the Sea. Returning to an album I had thought I’d worn out or got sick of or ignored in favor of many other ultimately less satisfying albums, as is the case here, is often like a revelation: The songs sound fresh and new and perk my ears with melodies and lyrics time has erased.
It’s like buying an incredible new album, especially if the album being returned to is one that hasn’t been listened to enough times for it to burrow its way into your memories, allowing you to enjoy the textures anew. Sometimes it gives perspective to other music you’ve picked up in its wake such as with the Decemberists, who were so obviously enamored of Neutral Milk Hotel. They beautifully filled a gap left since Neutral Milk Hotel released this second and seemingly last album on Feb. 10, 1998.
The elements are all there – simple lilting vocals that are a tad nasal, the unusual turns of phrase and equally odd accompanying music, the mysterious affiliations with the sea and general “old-timeyness,” if such a thing exists. That is to say, this is music that is not very interested in sounding modern but lacks any cues as to which era it might belong.
Neutral Milk Hotel’s “thing” is generally gentle acoustic music, pleasantly broken at times by elements that should seem cacophonous – but aren’t. It remains enthralling: There’s something so engagingly alien about In an Aeroplane Over the Sea that it never sinks into the cliché maudlin that music of this ilk so often does.
It’s dark and certainly odd, but it’s never a downer. Instead, In an Aeroplane Over the Sea is so odd that it feels like a joyous if inexplicably formed celebration of life. The only description of it that I feel fits is cryptic, but meaningful to me: This is the stuff of dusty attic air and the shafts of yellow sunlight that pass through windows to strike it and make it glow.
That somehow lyrics as disturbing as “your father made fetuses with flesh licking ladies” can be set to music in such a way as to sound beautiful is magical to me. And that’s what Neutral Milk Hotel’s In an Aeroplane Over the Sea is – magical, inexplicable and still a fresh alternative to everything else out there.
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