thevinylcornerblog:

Neutral Milk Hotel’s In An Aeroplane Over The Sea. An interesting(if altogether short-lived band), and I’m proud to say that I’ve got most of what constitutes their small output in the time they were together. 

Certainly an indie classic, with the intriguing Jeff Mangum straight at it’s heart. 

I’m about to sound like a pretentious hipster. I know it’s coming. I’m trying to fight it, but I’m losing. If you don’t think you can stand it, best stop reading now.

First, the good: I really like this picture. It’s a wonderful scene, even if it has been molested by instagram.

Now, the bad: I always feel gross when I listen to or read someone else talking about this album, especially in as detached a tone as this post uses. It’s a fine post. It just made me want to talk about this album. I feel like everyone has a deeply personal relationship with these lyrics. I’m going to write about mine. It’s going to make you feel gross. 3;

This is an amazing album. It is consistently in Amazon’s top 5 vinyl records. It deserves that spot. It’s catchy, It’s intensely emotional, funny, and heartwarming. It’s also really hard to talk about and, for some people, it’s really hard to listen to. 

The act of loving the album, the band, has become a kind of badge of honor or right of passage among certain (occasionally pretentious) subcultures. It’s a strange place for such a personal LP to be. 

The album, more or less, is about being in love with Anne Frank. It is also about being young, growing up. It’s about being from a broken home. It’s about finding love, losing love. It’s about depression and loneliness. It’s about being a freak. It’s about god (‘god’, not ‘God.’) It is about desperation and fear. It is beautiful poetry layered over some of the most dense soundscapes (mad up, mostly, of over compressed guitars, synths, nasally vocals and horns) that had been recorded by anyone, anywhere, at the time it was released. (It also uses the word semen more than should be enjoyable…) 

The album is a masterpiece. It’s iconic. The modern folk rock revival (Mumford and Sons, Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, et al) owes it’s success and can trace it’s roots back the this Athens, GA based band. 

I feel dirty for writing about it. This is an album that I want everyone to love, that I want to share with the world. But, it is not an album that you can just read about and listen to. I can write pages of praise, I could analyse and dissect the album, but it wouldn’t do any good. What this album means to me and what it will mean to you are different. I promise you this much, if you take the time to listen to it, it will mean something to you.

It’s not an album that you can just listen to. You have to work for it. You have to bring something to the table. It’s worth the experience. (No really, it is.) When the music starts speaking to you, it subtly shades the world around you. You, for the briefest of moments, get to know what it is like to be someone else, to live through something else. You get to feel fear and longing and triumph. 

This is the kind of album that you can lose yourself in. This is the kind of album that you *should* lose yourself in. 

Don’t just buy it to have it. Don’t just buy it because it’s “classic” or “iconic” or any other word. Don’t buy it because I like it. Buy it because it makes you a better person. 

(via phonoporno-deactivated20121113)