In February Neutral Milk Hotel’s second and final album, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, will turn twenty. When it was released in 1998 it was met with mixed critical reviews and little commercial success. Shortly after, the band would go on hiatus due to the lead singer, Jeff Mangum’s emotional breakdown. Since then the album has gained a potent cult status as a Psych-Folk masterwork.
For In the Aeroplane Over the Sea Neutral Milk Hotel took influence from genres like Lo-Fi, American Folk, Eastern-European Folk, Jazz, Punk Rock, Noise Rock, and Psychedelic Rock. The album has a lavish scale its predecessor On Avery Island (1996) does not. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea has a grand jubilee of horns, heavy bass, singing-saws, and storytelling. Where On Avery Island feels like a bag of songs In the Aeroplane Over the Sea cohesively develops themes of love, family, war, genocide, and suicide. The album plays constantly with tension and release between songs. Some are aggressive and righteous, others are whimsical and sardonic, and still others are gentle and melancholic. They build to the complete thematic package of a daunting sadness.
It all starts with King of Carrot Flowers Part 1. It’s a track that is telling about the album as a whole. It starts off conversational, reminiscing about playing make-believe, building tree forts, and making love for the first time. But Mangum warps these moments from cherished memories into desperate escapism with lyrics like “your mom would drink until she was not longer speaking and dad would dream of all the different ways to die.” The track builds noisily into King of Carrot Flowers Part 2 with Mangum hoarsely crying to Jesus Christ, and it shakes apart in Part 3.
The title track In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is a respite. Though it continues with imagery of ghosts and war planes its instrumentation of acoustic guitar and singing-saws rolls gently rather than jabbing sharply.
Two-Headed Boy does a little of both. This track is stripped of everything accept for Mangum’s voice and an acoustic guitar. It delves into the quiet and powerful feeling of alienation. The boy in this song is forced to dance around in “Sunday shoes.” Mangum tells him not to be upset by this; that his, a better world, is “left beneath Christmas trees in the snow.” The tempo of the songs slows as Mangum sees the boy laying in the snow and watches “spirals of white softly float over your eyelids and all you did.” There isn’t a pause between this track and the next, just a few last strums of guitar and then an out of tune trumpet.
The Fool has a heavy, sluggish pace. This instrumental track has horns punching along like some deranged funeral march. The Fool climbs slowly to the following track which leaves it far behind.
Holland 1945 comes on at full speed. Said to be inspired by a dream Mangum had about Anne Frank; it explores the senseless horror of war, life cut short by discrimination, and apathy toward those in pain. Holland 1945 feels like a ride through a carnival funhouse. The animatronic characters are sliming, but there is something haunted and disingenuous in their plastic eyes.
The album changes focus for the next three songs. Communist Daughter, Oh Comely, and Ghost all examine themes of loneliness, life without love, and a world in need of more love. Communist Daughter creates an almost warm sense of loneliness where the daughter in question has grown comfortable with being alone, but with added sound of crashing waves this song can’t help but have a small sense of longing for something more. Oh Comely establishes a simple beat with guitar that allows Mangum to tell a story about a woman who grew up with parents in a loveless marriage and who is now afraid to allow herself to be vulnerable enough to commit to a relationship. Ghost makes a plea for more kindness in the world. It references Anne Frank again as well as the suicide of Evelyn McHale. These three songs build a mood of mourning and melancholy, but it is not allowed to last.
The second instrumental track Untitled is loud and desperate, almost as if it is mocking the vulnerability in the previous three songs. Untitled has an organ as shrill as a circus calliope and a set of bagpipes blaring like a car horn. Even the name Untitled creates distance with no real image that can be drawn from it. At the end it fades into a single note that sounds metallic like a spinning hubcap after an accident.
This note continues into the final track on the album, Two-Headed Boy Part 2. As that note dissipates Mangum voice and acoustic guitar jangle to life one last time to sing about his brother’s suicide. He wants to let his brother know that he loves him and pleads, “make your smile sweet to see, don’t you take this away.” He describes a girl that means well by feeding his brother “tomatoes and radio wire,” but that doesn’t truly understand him. The track and album end with the sounds of Mangum standing up from an old chair, sighing, and walking away.
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea holds up well after two decades. Neutral Milk Hotel in general, but this album in particular has gone on to influence bands like the Decemberists, Arcade Fire, Beirut, and the Lumenieers. Its wild, dark, and esoteric enough, so it isn’t tethered too strongly to one era of music. There are elements that can place it in the late 1990s, such as the overblown bass and other Lo-Fi touches, but it doesn’t feel out of place today. This may be because it never really had a place in 1998 unlike some of its contemporaries. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea more than On Avery Island and more than many albums, tells a story. A strange and rich story with two-headed boys, tomatoes, and radio wire.
