In The Aeroplane Over The Sea
Neutral Milk
Hotel
Merge, 1998
Reviewed by
Troy Carpenter
Neutral Milk Hotel's second album is a tour-de-force of emotive music. Jeff
Mangum boils down the essence of rock and roll into eleven stunning tracks, each crucial
pieces to this concise, 40-minute musical manifesto.
The
experience of listening to Aeroplane cannot be equaled. It's a piece of art that
surrounds you, envelops you, explodes into your heart and explores your deepest emotions.
This is the coming out of a completely new breed of singer-songwriter: Mangum's voice
comes straight from his soul. He seems less intent on carefully constructing melodic and
rhythmic frameworks than being a conduit for the intangible beauty he hears in his mind.
Part of what makes the album so breathtaking is that it doesn't subscribe to any
particular sound or trend.
The album's flow is sublime, as marching horn sections buffer acoustic
stream-of-consciousness epics and life-affirming rockers. Multi-instrumentalist Scott
Spillane provides great relief from the Aeroplane's intensity with two
self-penned brass interludes. Drummer Jeremy Barnes and multi-instrumentalist (including
the 'singing saw') Julian Koster also turn in stellar performances. Mangum exhibits strong
focus as he conducts this ragged but tight band through a river of repeating motifs and
intense imagery, guided by the strong melodic current that flows throughout.
Mangum's voice strains to the limits of expression, and his vocal segues are exquisite.
After astounding the listener with exhaustive melodies, he wrings the last drop of vocal
energy out of his larynx, only to be rescued and transported to the next movement by
another melodic element, be it a rousing chorus, demonstrating flugelhorns or his own
overlapping vocals.
The title track is a happy sea chantey, part Beatles lullaby and part Hemingway sunset,
that hooks anyone who has made it through all three parts of the opening "King Of
Carrot Flowers" suite. You start to realize that all the songs are in the same key,
and repeating motifs give structure and cohesiveness to the record in the form of song
titles, melodic phrases and lyric subject matter.
Aeroplane features a welcome dearth of rhyming couplets. Especially on
"Two-Headed Boy" and "Oh Comely," Mangum discards rhyme schemes
altogether for an equally catchy combination of phrasing and word placement. His
disjointed but melodic vocal progressions stick in your head chiefly because of their
smart meter and alien-perfect sense.
Cryptic at first, the lyrics grab listeners strongly after the fourth or fifth spin and
seem to gain more depth of meaning every time. Mangum's compelling voice makes his seeming
nonsense jump out from its context until the contour completes itself. He breaks out
uncommonly unforgettable phrases like "Your father made fetuses with flesh-licking
ladies" and "All of them milking with green fleshy flowers while powerful
pistons were sugary sweet machines," more reminiscent of Dylan Thomas than
contemporary pop lyrics. But whatever he's saying, it comes across as deeply heartfelt.
This is far from rock commercialism - it is uncompromising art.
In The Aeroplane Over The Sea draws partly from the well of human emotions
experienced during WWII. The evocative art on the insert features bomber planes made out
of phonographs, a strange symbol linking music with war. Anne Frank's spectre is conjured
by Mangum's voice as it echoes the nervousness, sadness, and hopelessness of a life
struggle against a powerful force. He puts such honesty into every note that he sounds
like Anne's guardian angel, watching the Holocaust from the sky and reappearing 50 years
later to finally reveal the lessons learned from times of human despair.
"Oh Comely," the second of the acoustic epics, travels a haunting, perilous
course through a number of movements. The last verse describes the grim realities of the
holocaust: "I know they buried her body with others / her sister and mother and five
hundred families" and wonders about its effect on the state of human existence:
"Will she remember me 50 years later? / I wish I could save her in some sort of time
machine." At the song's close, you can hear the immediate reaction of someone in the
studio in awe of Mangum's performance: a voice exclaims "Holy Shit!".
The last track, "Two Headed Boy Pt. II," is the perfect closer. With his best
vocal melody yet, Mangum evokes the exausted but content sound of one who has been through
a great journey. He has traveled to the edges of energy and thought and returned home
wiser, but burdened with the truth. "Daddy please hear this song that I sing,"
his voice urges, and later concludes that "God is a place you will wait for the rest
of your life."
It's as if the artist's soul is burdened by these songs and in singing them, he has
unleashed some arcane understanding to all mankind. Through the album's emotional journey,
we realize that life is full of suffering and sorrow. To make the best of our time on
Earth, we must relish the precious moments of beauty in between. As Mangum sings in the
title track:
"One day we will die, and our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea / but
for now, we are young - let us lay in the sun and count every beautiful thing we can
see."
