Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

33⅓ Main Series #29

by Kim Cooper, Donna Coney Island (Narrator)

Of all the recordings to emerge from the Athens-via-Denver collective called Elephant 6, Neutral Milk Hotel's second album is the one that has worked its way under the most skins. Magnet magazine named it the best album of the 1990s, and Creative Loafing recently devoted a cover story to one fan's quest to understand why band leader Jeff Mangum dropped out of sight soon after Aeroplane's release. The record sells steadily to an audience that finds it through word of mouth.

Weird, beautiful, absorbing, difficult, In The Aeroplane Over the Sea is a surrealist text loosely based on the life, suffering and reincarnation of Anne Frank, with guest appearances from a pair of Siamese twins menaced by the cold and carnivores, a two-headed boy bobbing in a jar, anthropomorphic vegetables and a variety of immature erotic horrors.

Mangum sings his dreamlike narratives with a dreamer's intensity, his creaky, off key voice occasionally breaking as he struggles to complete each dense couplet. The music is like nothing else in the 90s indie underground: a psychedelic brass band, its members self-taught, forging polychromatic washes of mood and tribute. The songs stick to one narrow key, the images repeat and circle back, and to listen is to be absorbed into a singular, heart-rending vision.

Genres: Music, Nonfiction, Biography, History, American, Pop Culture, The United States Of America

Audible Audio

First published November 16, 2005

About the author

Kim Cooper is the creator of 1947project, the crime-a-day time travel blog that spawned Esotouric's popular crime bus tours, including Pasadena Confidential, the Real Black Dahlia and Weird West Adams. Her collaborative L.A. history blogs include  On Bunker Hill  and In SRO Land. With husband Richard Schave, Kim curates the Salons of LAVA - The Los Angeles Visionaries Association. When the third generation Angeleno isn't combing old newspapers for forgotten scandals, she is a passionate advocate for historic preservation of signage, vernacular architecture and writer's homes. Kim was for many years the editrix of  Scram,  a journal of unpopular culture. Her books include Fall in Love For Life, Bubblegum Music is the Naked Truth, Lost in the Grooves and an oral history of the cult band Neutral Milk Hotel. Her debut literary map is The Raymond Chandler Map of Los Angeles: A Guide to the Usual and Unusual, illustrated by Paul Rogers. The Kept Girl is her first novel.

Reviews

[Greg · Rating 5 out of 5]

soft silly music is meaningful magical

"When you were young you were the king of carrot flowers...."

I'd argue that the best two rock-based albums of the 1990's were Jane's Addiction's Ritual de lo Habitual and Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Other albums released in this decade might have had a higher volume of great songs, they might have songs I like better than anything on these two albums but as a whole piece of work, as a flowing collection songs that flow together and make up a sort of narrative whole these two win out. There are quite a few similarities between the two, they are both psychedelic influenced, they both have a sort of disjointed story running through the songs, and they both start off with a series of catchy songs and end with the most satisfying songs (ignore "Classic Girl and I like to consciously place it before "Three Days" (anyone familiar with In an Aeroplane Over the Sea will realize that make some 'factual' statements that are just untrue later on in the review. These statements should be viewed suspiciously, but also with the realization that they are in a sense 'subjectively' true for me (ie., they are the way that I see the album and have experienced it), this is probably due to the fragmentation of what is known as 'an album' first in the age of CD's which essentially destroyed the original format of Side A and Side B (or even more sides as in say the case of The Beatles "White Album") and further created a divide between artist intentionality and the expectation that the listener would listen to any 'album' in the manner that the artist originally meant for it to be listened to, with the advent of MP3 players, which if you are like me was almost always set on some kind of random play or shuffle mode. This was also ever-present for me in the CD age, and maybe it speaks something about me that I generally can't listen to music (I mean couldn't, if I were speaking in the real present tense I'd have to say I can barely listen to music at all, which sounds suspiciously untrue, but isn't. I don't listen to much music anymore, I think I cover this in more detail somewhere else in this review though) without intentionally distorting the experience through the use of shuffling the order. The difference between the shuffling feature on a CD player and on my IPod was huge though. I was one of those people who poured over linear notes and CD booklets, so through the act of reading I still 'experienced' the album in the order the artist meant it to be listened to in. I haven't had this experience since I divorced myself completely from the physicality of records and CDs, but nevertheless I was a huge fan of the random feature on CD players and on my Ipod)), which also happen to be quite a bit longer than the short fast songs they open with. Also for quite awhile both albums appeared to be the last word from a young band that broke up before they suffered the embarrassment of a band still kicking around long after their prime (it's so easy for me to not be aware that Jane's Addiction is still kicking around, at least for the rest of the 90's they kept their embarrassments to other projects).

"I love you, Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ I love you, yes I do."

Unlike any of the other 33 1/3 books I've read, this isn't a book so much about the album as it is a biography of the band. Since Neutral Milk Hotel only released two real albums, along with a small trove of demos and live recordings floating around the internets, it's not had to capsulize the band in a short book. This format is fitting for the band, while it would be tiresome to read yet another short history of a band like The Beatles, the background story of Neutral Milk Hotel, Jeff Mangum and the Elephant 6 collective is welcome.

On the CD, the second track is sort of two songs. They call it "King of Carrot Flowers Pt 2 & 3", but it's also the "I love you Jesus" song and "Up and Over". Some bootlegs / live recordings have some other names for these two tracks and sometimes they are played as individual songs. "King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 2" is the uncomfortable part of the song. Jeff Mangum says during one live recording I have of this song that it's not ironic. The audience on that recording laugh, as if calling the song unironic is itself ironic. Irony is confusing. Most people I know who like this album either find this song to be a joke or just a dark spot to be ignored. I don't know what I really think of it, there is something about the song I love, but I am also a sucker for build-ups in songs that lead to epic-spazz outs. I used to picture in my head what my power-violence band could have done with this song. I think the results would have been phenomenally embarrassing. We were great at totally spazzing out and this is what happens as the song moves from the "Jesus" to "Up and Over".

"Up and over we go through the wave and undertow."

The album has just about everything in it that I would find great in a book. It's disjointed a mess of trailer park family drama, circus freaks, grotesque creepy sex, Anne Frank, and ambiguous religion. Lyrics and narratives have always been really important to me in songs. Even stupid lyrics I generally like better than listening to guitar wanking or epically long, technically perfect but boring songs. Technically great rock musicians have never done anything for me. The fact that I can play most of this album on the guitar is testament to how untechnical the basic musical structure of the songs are. I'm an awful guitar player. But it's really all about the words.

"What a beautiful face I have found in this place that is circling all around the sun."

On first listens the best songs on the album were the early songs, they were the catchy ones, the 'punkish' messes of noise and vocals that could barely keep up with the almost sonic mess from the various strange sounds being produced by traditional rock instruments, trombones and theremins. It was almost like listening to the start of The Feeding of the 5000 by Crass, when Steve Ignorant couldn't keep up with Penny Rimbaud's frantic and bombastic military drumming. Even though Neutral Milk Hotel and Crass sound nothing alike, there is something about both bands that occupy a similar place in my head or heart or spleen or wherever the bands that I love go to live. Maybe it is their earnestness, an almost over-the-top you can't fucking miss how sincere we are quality to both of them. This is important. Most pop-music sucks because there is no sincerity, it's just a bunch of garbage and nonsense over stale chord progressions and canned beats, nonsense rhymes and yeah yeah baby baby babies. Like my books, I want my music to bleed with the creator's thoughts, feelings and pathos.* But back to the album, as it moves on the songs get longer (sort of like Crass would do with their career), they get quieter(unlike Crass), the band starts to disappear, almost as if foreshadowing the breakdown of the band. By the time the album begins to near the end with "Oh Comely" Jeff Mangum seems to be left alone, the band would return, but even if there is anyone else playing along with Jeff on "Two-headed Boy Pt. 2" it sounds like he's alone, like the kid in the jar, safe and warm and left alone in the dark when you go.

*Sometimes when I see some hipster ironically wearing some t-shirt for an 'uncool' band I want to put my fist in their mouth. I get the same feeling when I see some hipster wearing anything with brass knuckles (including tattoos of). Since I've been learning how to fight I want to get in front of them and say, 'lets go motherfucker'. I don't, obviously. I don't know why I just shared that.

"We will take off our clothes and they'll be lacing fingers through the notches in your spine."

I wasn't cool enough to have caught on to the Neutral Milk Hotel bandwagon when it was rolling around the first time around. As much as I would have loved to have seen them play live, in their glory, I'm happy I didn't find them when they were around. I knew of them, but never really listened to them much until sometime in the early to mid 2000's, a time when they came into my full consciousness and helped to keep my head straight. For a couple of years just listening to any of their songs would make me feel better, which was a good thing because very little was making me feel anything good then. Over time though the music lost it's potency to instantly transport me to a better place. It's still an amazing album, the songs are still some of my favorites in the whole world, but too often now my feelings are dulled to them, just like they are to so many other songs and bands that used to be so important to me. I needed Neutral Milk Hotel at the time I found them. I'd be afraid that if I had discovered them five years earlier the personal magic would have already disappeared when I kind of needed it.

I have no music anymore that has that effect on me. Maybe that's why I almost never listen to anything anymore. I kind of hate music these days. Which is sort of sad since it was one of my big loves for so many years. I generally don't watch movies (or films as they called) anymore either, and I used to really love them too. One day I will probably not read books anymore either. I hope that doesn't happen but I wouldn't have believed music would generally sicken me ten years ago. If there was a betting pool on if I would still be reading books twenty years from now I'd give you the inside to tip to bet nope. I hope I'm fucking wrong though.

"And it's so sad to see the world agree that they'd rather see their faces fill with flies, all when I'd want to keep white roses in their eyes"

"Holland, 1945" is end of the poppy part of the album, this is the last song that can be thought of as 'catchy', the next song, "Communist Daughter" can get stuck in your head, but it's all because of a sing-song repetition, it cheats its way into your mind, and aside from the instrumental tracks it's one of the low points of the album for me. But that is still a track away. This is the end of the spastic, fun sounding songs (with lyrics), it's really the entire bands last hurrah, the band will still be lingering around in the background, but this upbeat dirge to Anne Frank is for most purposes the last Neutral Milk Hotel song, the rest of the album is a departure (this is where I'm starting to play a little loose with objective facts, bear with me).

"Semen stains the mountain tops."

A lullaby of sorts. A transition. It's been at least a couple of months since I started this review. When I started this review I wanted to write a review of the album, more than a review of the book. The book would just be an excuse to write about an album. Then I ran out of steam. Normally I would just post the review at that point, usually with the warning that I'm unhappy with the review and then feel quite uncomfortable when people comment that they like the review and I feel like once again I'm putting on a self-deprecating schtick, which maybe I am. This song is one of my least favorites of the album, it's the "Vicar in a Tutu" of the album, the sort of almost novelty song that sits uncomfortably on an otherwise great album. Some people would say it's the Jesus song that is the inexplicable shit that pops up on the album that to be polite it's best to ignore. For me this song is the steaming pile of poo.

"And I know they buried her body with others. Her sister and mother and 500 families. And will she remember me 50 years later? I wished I could save her in some sort of time machine. Know all your enemies. We know who our enemies are."

"Oh Comely" took the longest of all the songs I love on this album to be fully loved. It was the last gem to the album held out for me, something about the track alluded me for a long time. It's not like I disliked the track, but it just sort of hung back from the other tracks. Maybe it was that the song is a lot longer than the average songs on the album, and my general dislike historically towards longer songs. Whatever the reason part of me saved this song for awhile, I went through infatuations with other songs on the album. This one was my favorite and then that one was, and finally I fell in love with "Oh Comely". I have a tendency to try to save something from authors I love so that at some future time I'll have a new book to turn to. One that I can almost guarantee I'll love. Unconsciously I did that for this album, too.

"And one day in New York City, baby, a girl fell from the sky, from the top of a burning apartment building, fourteen stories high, and when her spirit left her body how it split the sun, I know that she will live forever"

Anyone familiar with the album will think that I lied earlier with the next track, "Ghost" still has the entire band. It has the noisiness and all of that going on. If the track had been placed somewhere in the first half of the album the song would have lost some of it's potency for me. Instead it's the lyrical song placed between "Oh Comely" and "Two-Headed Boy, Pt. 2" and for me it flows with the more longer and introspective dirgey songs. But, more importantly for me, and this is something that is unintentional of the song and it's a personal view of the song that I don't expect anyone else to share, because Jeff Mangum would have needed the time machine he wanted to save Anne Frank with to have written this song as I hear it. This is my own 9/11 song. Through some word associations around the words burning building, falling from the sky and 14 the second half of this song has it's own personal meanings to me. It's of course unobjective and wrong to put these sorts of interpretations on to things. In my head I dedicate this song to the person whose name I'll never know who I watched fall and die in front of me that morning. If I had a time machine I'd want to go back and save both of us, it wouldn't be possible, but since it's all a fantasy I'd also save all of the other people who died while I looked on from a safer distance between 13th and 14th streets.

"God is a place where some holy spectacle lies. And when we break we'll wait for our miracle. God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life."

This is one of the stranger songs on the album and brings the whole weird story to a close. Incest, and God and circus freaks, they all make return appearances here. For awhile this was my favorite song on the album, well for awhile about half the album was my favorite song at one point or another. But this was my penultimate favorite song. The song is a borderline rambling mess leading up to the God part that even though I don't believe in God still feels so important, like something very true is being imparted, and right out of comments about God the song abruptly reprises "Two-Headed Boy Pt. 1", comes to an ending and the leaves the listener with a few seconds of silence before you can hear the guitar being put down and what I imagine is Jeff Mangum leaving. It's kind of sort of a perfect ending to the album.

I don't remember how long ago I started this review. It's been months. It's not at all how I pictured it would end up. It's not the review of the album I imagined it would be. My favorite tracks on the album are barely commented on, I just have no vocabulary for getting the reasons why I love a song into words. I thought I'd be able to. Sorry if this was rambling and once again self-indulgent.

Thanks for reading.

"But don't hate her when she gets up to leave."

[Mattia Ravasi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully narrated and rich in detail. The unlikely account, fantastical and wistful, of how one of pop music's most magical records came to be.

[Paul Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s a good chunk of people out there who wonder what all the fuss is about when it comes to this album. Doesn’t sound so unique, right? Lo-fi singer/guitarist, psychedelic lyrics chock full of historical references (Anne Frank?), a brass section coming in unexpectedly… believe it or not, it isn’t all that uncommon. But what listeners might be forgetting — or simply don’t realize — is that in ‘97, within the increasingly rule-bound confines of indie rock, this band did it first. Neutral Milk Hotel didn’t have a template; they made the template. I hear N.M.H. in the music of the Decemberists and the Arcade Fire, two well known examples (both of which author Kim Cooper mentions in her book.) The list is much longer.

I was hesitant to even crack this book. The album it covers has a mysterious, timeless feel; would too much information dull that, or rather, bring the album too much into focus? Bandleader and songwriter Jeff Mangum pulled the plug on the band after this record, even as his audience was growing steadily. He’s remained largely out of the public eye since, playing music with friends but showing no desire to continue with Neutral Milk Hotel or even to cash in on this album’s ten-year anniversary (something widely noted recently) with what would surely be a lucrative reunion tour (Lollapalooza, anyone?)

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea comes from a time when DIY had a different meaning. The “D” aspect was much tougher, much more individualized. It was pre-ProTools in every bedroom studio, and pre-internet culture (although not pre-internet itself.) Bands didn’t email new songs to hundreds of blogs with a click of a mouse; it was an era of home-made cassettes and xeroxed artwork, as in the mid-90’s CDs were common but still a lot more expensive to produce. We aren’t talking about the dark ages here, but since then there’s been a huge shift in how people make music, and how they pass it around. Aeroplane seems to be of an earlier time, when bands in smaller cities incubated in a less media-saturated climate. There was less temptation to please by aping whatever Pitchfork was fawning over that week. Without immediate access to that info, the reflexive desire to copy something successful was kept at bay.

Of course, none of this would mean anything if the album wasn’t great, and it is. Mangum’s strained voice and lyrical gift is at the center of it all; even under layers of psychedelia, he seems to be laying it all out there. Kicking off a song with “I love you, Jesus Christ”? Dang, in the indie-rock world, that’s a bit risky. But it’s a risk he took, and it draws you in. If he’s not planning on hiding behind irony and wryness, he deserves a listen. And it only gets more rewarding.

Tellingly, this book — which chronicles not only the making of the album but also gives a history of the Elephant 6 collective for context — has one voice missing within its oral history, and that’s Mangum’s. Shrewdness, or just didn’t feel like talking? We’ll never know. I did ask author Kim Cooper about this, and she was kind enough to reply:

Kim, do you think not having any direct quotes from Jeff adds to his “mystique”?

I imagine there is a sort of shadow figure created in the center of the book; all these people talking about one person who only appears in the memories of others. There are certainly plenty of places where someone can find a record of Jeff speaking, but in this book, where I was doing all the interviews myself and not using existing ones, Jeff simply chose not to be one of the voices. If that adds to his mystique, so be it.

You thank him in the intro and mention he’s doing well, which is nice. It’d be a drag if he got painted as indie rock’s Syd Barrett if that’s far from the truth. I take it he’s cool with the book and let it be known all should speak freely for it?

Before beginning work on the book, I spoke with Jeff and let him know who I was and what my intentions were when writing about his life and his friends. Had he been vehemently against my doing the book as an oral history and as an intimate study of the creation of Aeroplane, I would probably have changed my focus and written a different book
about the album. But happily, he seemed cool with it. And since you mention it, I did notice that more people returned my emails after I spoke with Jeff than before…

Do you think the album really *is* as unique as that ever-growing mythology around it would indicate? Or am I nitpicking by even trying to separate the two?

Absolutely it is. Any work of art that comes so much out of one person’s dreams, their reading, their imagination is entirely unique. There might be other records that are as distinctly of their own world, but there’s nothing else like Aeroplane, despite all the subsequent records that it has influenced.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good read, but I was disappointed with several things. Firstly, I expected more analysis of the themes in the album, and there's almost none of that--90% of the book is devoted to the context, recording, etc. (which is great, and I'm glad it's all in there!) Halfway through, the author is like "So the editors asked me if I was going to do a line-by-line analysis and I definitely didn't want to tear apart the album by doing that!" but COME ON! You wrote a book solely about one album! Analyze it! She eventually does go ahead and do these cursory analyses of each song, but they feel perfunctory, with a lot of 12th-grade English bullshit tenuous connections ("This song may be inspired by the French surrealist Berzumeau's work 'La Vie Poopoo'...") and not enough better, smarter, bullshit connections. And she never discussed the major themes of the album--you could write fifty pages just on the somatic imagery alone (most of the songs have very descriptive, physical references to the body and body parts).

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

To be fair, the book wasn't what I expected it to be. And where do I get off expecting a book to be anything?

I wanted a detailed analysis of the album itself, the songs, even a breakdown of what instruments were played where, etc. This book does not provide that. There was only one brief chapter on lyrics. Overall though, it's very well written, and there's plenty of discussion of the band's sound as a whole, and a very interesting bit on how the record was produced (with fuzz!), and a history of the musicians in and around the band. My only other quibble is the starf*cking treatment given Jeff Magnum by the author. Yes, this is one of my favorite albums of all time and I understand and have experienced the life-changing and affirming power of music (heck, I've written a short story and a novel inspired by NMH), but damn, Magnum isn't Jesus Christ. Is he? You'd think he is by the reverence with which he's treated (including one vomit inducing line comparing his public disappearance to the horrible death of Anne Frank. Um, break, please give it to me).

[Wade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Before reading Kim Cooper’s "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" I had previously read a couple of other books in the 33 1/3 series (one on REM’s "Murmur" and the other on The Beach Boys’ "Pet Sounds"). Murmur and Pet Sounds were both albums that I loved before reading the books about them; they were albums that I had already memorized backwards and forwards and I already loved every single note on those albums, and reading a book about each one of them only made me love those albums even more. But, with "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" I had a very different experience. This was an album that I had never gotten into. It came out while I was in college, which should have been a time when I would have been ripe for enjoying this album, but I just never got into it… and I had heard pieces of it every now and then over the years since then, but for some reason it just never clicked with me… the only real explanation for why I had never gotten into it was because I just didn’t “get it”. I guess the timing was wrong, but it just never hit me in such a way that I really cared about it. For whatever reason (maybe it’s some of the music I’ve been getting into recently… music, which I now see, was heavily influenced by this monumental album), but (whatever it was) I was finally ready for this album. The timing was finally right (which, in all honesty, is so critical for enjoying so much music… you can’t force that timing, you just have to wait until the time is right to get into some specific bands and when the time is right it just works for some reason and there really is no other way to explain it).

I’ve now had this CD playing in my car non-stop for the past six months (yes, I still listen to CD’s… and it’s been in the six-disc CD-changer in my car for half a year now and I haven’t ejected it once). I’ve previously had the experience with albums where I continue to peel back layer after layer after layer of the beauty of an album and I continue to appreciate the album more and more over time… uncovering new layers of beauty and appreciation that had completely escaped me on all of my previous listening experiences of the album. (Really, all of my favorite albums in music history have given me this experience… that would be a very short list of albums… but I have enjoyed this experience with a decent number of albums, and it’s one of the things that I just plain love about music.) With "Aeroplane" that experience just kept happening… it kept happening every single time I made another lap through the album (and, over the past six months I feel safe in assuming that I’ve heard this album around a hundred times), and I just keep enjoying it more and more. What is it about this album that does that? I mean, it’s “raw”… to use that over-used music descriptor… but, it’s raw-er than raw, it’s not trying to be “raw” in the sense of heavy-metal or some kind of music that is trying to prove to you that it is raw, like it’s saying, “Hey, look at me, I’m music and I’m loud and I’m raw! Rarrrr!!!”… it’s “raw” in the sense of just jamming right into your chest without any pretense… it’s like jamming a meaty sandwich into your face with no condiments on it. It’s just there and it’s real and you taste it and it’s good and you can’t believe how simple it is but also how excellent it is… and yet, the more you experience it, you realize that’s it’s not simple at all… it’s anything but simple… what at first seemed so simple now has so many complex layers to it.

As far as the book is concerned since that’s what I’m technically here to talk about. I really enjoyed the way Kim Cooper wrote… she took you back into the season that Jeff and the band were making this album and made you feel like you were living with them and riding around in the van with them and just getting to know them. I also appreciated the way she described the "In the Aeroplace Over the Sea" recording sessions… there have been other times when I have read articles or books where the writer talks about the recording process of an album and unless you have a Masters Degree in Engineering and Production you can’t understand a word they’re saying (that was actually one of the weaknesses to the book on "Murmur" in this series… the technical jargon was just too technical). But, at the same time, I love hearing how things were recorded and how certain sounds were captured in the studio, and when some bit of technical expertise during the recording process makes for a deeper understanding of the music, I think that’s awesome and I think Cooper was able to explain that really well and not make me feel completely lost. I also appreciated the way she talked through each song… she wasn’t trying to give some sort of word-for-word explanation of the lyrics, and thereby taking away from the individual enjoyment that each listener experiences with this album but at the same time she was able to add a lot of insight to songs that I never would have had a chance to uncover on my own. I have a very odd experience with the lyrics to songs. I memorize words to songs absurdly easy… and I’ll remember word-for-word songs that I haven’t heard in over ten years… but yet, I don’t really pay attention to lyrics very often (I’ll know every word in a song, but I’ll have absolutely no clue what that song is about). So, I have to confess my complete and utter ignorance in not realizing that Anne Frank was the main character (for lack of better term) of this album… how in the world I listened to (and sang along with) “Holland, 1945” and didn’t catch this (I mean the song is called “Holland, 1945!” Hello! World War II!), but nonetheless I was very grateful to read about a lot of the themes and inspirations behind a lot of the writing. I had absolutely no clue how to interpret the lyric “I love you, Jesus Christ” the first time I heard that line… I mean, even I (in all of my I-don’t-pay-attention-to-the-meaning-of-lyrics ignorance) at least caught that line and thought, “Uhh… I wonder why he’s saying that… is that sarcasm, or is this a bold and unapologetic profession of faith, or is this something totally different?” I appreciated her addressing some of the more overt lines like that as well as uncovering some other themes while also not trying to explain everything for the reader at the same time.

As the book progresses, once she gets to the point in the “story” when the album is actually released, the book picks up with a speed that the band must have also experienced once the album began to take off and receive critical acclaim as well as pretty decent sells. This book was really well written and helped me to peel back even more layers of enjoyment on an album that I continue to enjoy more and more.

[Jay Slayton-Joslin · Rating 5 out of 5]

What's not to like. A Story of a great album. Liked the approach of not spending long at all trying to decode lyrics or analyse them like a poem (Though when they did do this it was more with anecdotal times of the band to provide context -- which was appreciated). Written in a fun and accessible way and plenty of research. Couldn't ask for more.

[Bek (MoonyReadsByStarlight) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper, goes in detail, not just about the groundbreaking album, but into the band itself. We see how they met, moved apart, and came back together. There is even a good bit on On Avery Island, the album before Aeroplane. Later in the book, there is also a breakdown of each song in the album as well as chapters on the tour, album art, and subsequent haitus of the band (though since its publication in 2005, there has been a tour and some songs and demos released).

There really was something so genuine, nearly magical, about how they were able to make their music projects. The care and collaboration that went into these projects is quite amazing and the environment is something that I don't think could be recreated. It's certainly not something that could have existed under a large label (and for the better for the mental health of the members, it seems).

My main issue was some very weird, outdated language choices (an unfortunately common misuse of schizophrenia and the g-slur -- both completely unnecessary to get the point across) in the small section about the first song of the album, which did sour that chapter for me a bit. But for the most part, this was a really solid and interesting read. If you are enamored with the album like I am or if you are a musician or interested in the creative process, I would recommend this.

[Sam · Rating 3 out of 5]

somehow still felt more like a gushy fan tribute than music reportage? nmh has very intense “type of guy” energy

[Paul Siegell · Rating 5 out of 5]

all this did was make me even more obsessed with this band than i already was.

[Jon Hewelt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love this series, and this book is a wonderful, wonderful addition to it.

33 1/3 is a series about albums: each author dissects, in its own way, an album that speaks to them. That exploration may take the shape of an oral history, an analysis of the music, an interpretation of themes, or a personal anecdote of how the album shaped the author's life. As to be expected, this freedom results in certain expectations not being met by certain readers, for certain titles.

I mention this because, curious, I scoped out some of the other GoodReads reviews as I was reading, and many expressed disappointment that Kim Cooper didn't offer much analysis of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, in and of itself. At the time, I, too, felt slightly disappointed that we didn't get more information on the album's contents. A few years ago I fell-hard--for In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and wanted to know so much more about it. There was something about it that hit deep inside my soul. Something almost religious, though I gave up concrete religious ideals years ago. I was in love, and I felt a special, different kind of love with those who'd also listened, and who also loved it.

When I read Kim Cooper's 33 1/3, I had this expectation for understanding the album on a deeper level. By the book's end, I'd received that deeper understanding, but not in the way I expected, and yet so much more satisfying than what I'd hoped.

Kim Cooper's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is an oral history of Neutral Milk Hotel and the Elephant 6 collective: how they met each other, when they started playing music together, where they traveled and how they lived. Everything that led up to the recording of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and a little bit after.

Testimony identifies Elephant 6 as a collective of people first, musicians second. Albums were recorded, concerts were played, but above all hung this idea of forming a loving and nurturing and supportive community. A community of understanding each others quirks (Jeff Mangum's sleepwalking, for example), and embracing each other fully.

There is a little bit, near the end, about the actual album: little pieces of trivia that color individual tracks in certain ways. But to paraphrase, Cooper, the primary text is the album, and the secondary text is one's interpretation of it. She did not want to add her own conjecture, at the risk of dismantling the wonder and mystery of such a unique work of art. And after all, what does that conjecture matter? Is there a definitive answer to the interpretation of lyrics? For some albums, perhaps. But for Jeff Mangum, for Neutral Milk Hotel, for In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, it's less knowing, more feeling. What happens to you, when you listen?

It's no question that a fan of Neutral Milk Hotel/In the Aeroplane would love this book, but I'd also recommend this to anyone who's passionate about creating art, and passionate about understanding what art means to me. Cooper's oral history offers a perspective on creativity removed from the corporate system. A perspective focused on love, and creation for the sake of creation: ideas I myself want to fully embrace. And if nothing else, pick up a copy of this book, turn to the last page, and read it. Blew me away.

[Cave Empter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The semi-religious tone that accompanies personal histories of niche art and celebrity rarely feels earned. Often it feels pretentious, or exaggerated, or excessively-detailed. Here, I'm unsure. I was already convinced of something ineffable in this album, and the band and stories behind it, but this essay highlights or reveals a number of factors that magnify that feeling. It's clear it came from a very special group, not-quite-centred around one particularly special musician, and the accounts documented throughout back that up. It's interesting to hear about Elephant 6 slumming between communes, gigging 'til late in the morning, chipping away at songs now etched in so many minds. It's nice to have some background to bounce my understanding of the album off of, and it's great to get a better picture of the reception at the time.

However, it's impossible to write something like this without seeming a little silly. There's only so many times I can read a paragraph that sounds almost as incomprehensible as this–

When the Blown Down Cybercats were in stasis, the new band — a ska-soup fusion — of April Babies was just coming together. From small-town Texas to large-life Vegas, every instrument was singing high. Trent Fungler remembers it well. He says being in the room when Aled Blint sang a tribute to 'Pataphysics was "a special moment."

–without thinking the first few chapters should be cut down a little. Cooper knows her analysis of the songs themselves are limited to personal experience, she addresses that. But the rest of it, too, can sometimes feel too awestruck for expression. There are moments when the explication of the emotional power behind lines, songs, or events is left as an exercise for the reader. Fine, I can figure it out, but I'm not reading this for my view on events. The strengths of this essay lie in Cooper's excellent research and interviewing, and in the moments when her passion and analysis to provide a more personal touch.

If I'm allowed a final complaint, I'd add an epilogue. Lots has happened to Mangum, the album, and the band since the first printing of this work in 2005, but it remains unaddressed.

[Roddy · Rating 3 out of 5]

La mitad de este libro es una soberana lata. Gente que parece sacada de una película de Sebastián Silva. O algo peor.
Cuando llega a los discos ya es otra cosa. La autora tiene una imaginación bien a ras de piso, así que su máxima especulación es vincular las letras de las canciones con Sudamérica. Quizás no es poco. La prensa de música popular tiende a sobreleer cosas que son particularmente simples y de un “Oh baby” llegan, sin decir agua va, a los sonetos de Shakespeare.
Hay algo especialmente incómodo y a la vez satisfactorio en escuchar a un tipo cantando a todo pulmón que quiere mucho a Jesucristo. Esa misma falta de pretensión debería servir para ser leal al proyecto y darse de cuenta de que la mayor parte de las letras son puras leseras. Y que le gustó Ana Frank.
Yo le hubiese sacado 100 páginas y me habría concentrado en la grabación de los discos y en las canciones y le pongo todas las estrellitas.

[Malcolm Almuntazar-Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely recommend to any music enthusiasts out there who want to learn a little bit of history behind one of the most (in)famous and iconic albums in indie music. Cooper gives a great run-down of the Athens DIY music scene that ultimately led to the conditions which produced Neutral Milk Hotel and then their two albums. Accompanied with many interesting tidbits about the lives and personalities of the members. Also Cooper provided really interesting context to each song in the album along with how the iconic In the Aeroplane Over the Sea album cover was made. Thoroughly enjoyed this quick read.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is definitely one of the most hipster things I've ever read. I do have a new appreciation for this album and NMH as a whole. They were extremely dedicated to making it so pure and powerful. The writer focuses on details about where they lived a little too much which distracted the beginning /middle of the book, but it picks up towards the end again. It was a short read and makes me want to re-listen to the album for the millionth time. Of course I'll always have some hope that they would make music again one day, but it doesn't seem likely.

[Chris Scott · Rating 4 out of 5]

I find the 33 1/3 output to be a pretty mixed bag but this is one of the better ones I’ve read because it’s thoughtfully put together and I learned a handful of things I didn’t already know. As is usually the case with this series, trying to explain the lyrics is the weakest point, and the author here even admits that she does a perfunctory job, which is really the most that could be expected of anyone trying to summarize Jeff Mangum’s poetry.

[Craig Currie · Rating 5 out of 5]

So inspiring. Beautifully written, just perfect really. I especially enjoyed the bits on how the two LPs were recorded. This was my first 33 1/3 book and I’m excited to find more.

[Ava · Rating 2 out of 5]

Love the album but this book honestly did nothing for me.

[Neo · Rating 4 out of 5]

honestly a really good insight into the history of a really cool band that i like a lot. however there was some weird stuff about Anne Frank which keeps this from a 5 star.

[baruch]

yeah i love this damn album! rip anne frank

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5! Great companion to the E6 doc.

[daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

that two-headed boy tho

[Hollie]

The history of one of my favourite albums which captures how special it is. I wish the book had included more detailed song-by-song essays.

#331/3 #music #nonfiction #neutralmilkhotel #jeffmangum #intheaeroplaneoverthesea #holland1945 #twoheadedboy #annefrank #album #kimcooper #90s #band

[J.T. Wilson · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was love at first sight for me and 'In the Aeroplane Over the Sea': three-quarters of the way through my first listen to it, I was ordering it on Amazon. It somehow manages to be everything at once: it's simultaneously extremely direct and completely opaque; robustly conceptual (recurring characters including a two-headed boy, a Siamese twin called Goldaline, Anne Frank) and glued together from abstractions; ramshackle and chaotic yet meticulous; recorded on acoustic instruments yet full of fuzz and experimental noise. 'Oh Comely' is eight minutes of a guy singing out of tune at full volume accompanied only by two chords on an acoustic guitar, yet it's hypnotically compelling. It's an album that can break your heart with an inexplicable lyric like "blister please with those wings in your spine/love to be with a brother of mine". It sounds like outsider music and like Top 20 botherers like the Flaming Lips or the Arcade Fire. It was Neutral Milk Hotel's second album, but there have never been any others.

Miraculously, Cooper manages to distill the essence of the album without unlocking any of its mysteries, helped by the availability of the performers: most of the band and their collaborators give interviews, but enigmatic frontman Jeff Mangum does not. It helps that the album's sound and story are so closely linked: musicians working unsatisfying jobs are lured to the big city to master unfamiliar instruments, where they share communal houses and scary sleepwalking experiences and record chaotic songs in unsuitable rooms. They then go on tour and play the songs, where they throw each other into drumkits, play disintegrating instruments, leave thousands of pounds in Pizza Hut accidentally, but are united by their love for each other and the astonishing songs that they play. All of the band speak reverentially about the songs and about Mangum himself. Everyone thinks this record is something special.

Cooper's book is full of energy, leaves nothing uncovered, tells the story of both the album and of NMH's career in total, provides some - but not too much - technical production-geek detail and some broad lyrical outlines, and feels like a book written with a deep love for the album. This is the best 331/3 book I've read. All of them should be like this.

[Spencer Rich · Rating 3 out of 5]

Been putting this one off. I knew the whole Elephant 6 crowd during most of their Athens years. I really enjoyed everything the author wrote about the years leading up to Aeroplane from Ruston, Denver, Athens, some sojourns on the west coast and NYC. But for me, the actual album was kind of a let-down after Avery Island. By '99, I was more interested in other Athens bands, like The Glands, The Possibilities, and Little Red Rocket. So by the time the book actually got into the main subject at hand, I lost interest.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

The 33 1/3 series is a pretty nifty idea: write short, yet thorough books based on a seminal album. I first heard about this series when a friend of mine sent information about the publisher seeking pitches for the next one. I was intrigued. And surprised, because my library has a bunch of them. I picked "In The Aeroplane Over the Sea" first because for the last six months, I've had Neutral Milk Hotel on the brain.

The book was clearly written with love and the research and interviews of people involved (excepting, it seems, Jeff Mangum) are all interesting and provided insight into the history and making of one of my favorite albums. However, as with most books about music, I found myself wanting to shut the book and just put the album on. Writing and reading about music is so peculiar, at once intriguing and almost wholly unnecessary: just listen. I am not a musician and I think maybe some of the more technical parts of this book went a bit over my head. I did enjoy the descriptions of the Athens music scene and I enjoyed thinking about the band thinking about this album in their shared houses and testing out all the songs that have become so important to me at small shows filled with friendly faces. I like visualizing the story of the album. And that's why I'll probably read other titles in this series.

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

"...there's something pure and infinite in you, that wants to come out of you, and can come out of no other person on the planet. That's what you've got to share, and that's as real and important as the fact that you're alive. We were able, at a really young age, to somehow protect each other so we could feel that. The world at large, careerism, money, magazines, your parents, the people at the rock club in your town, other kids, nothing is going to give you that message, necessarily. In fact, most things are going to load you away from it, sadly, because humanity is really confused at the moment. But you wouldn't exist if the universe didn't need you. And any time I encounter something beautiful that came out of a human somewhere, that's them, that's their own soul. That's just pure, whatever its physicality is, if the person can play piano, if they can't play piano, if they're tone deaf, whatever it is, if it's pure, it hits you like a sledgehammer. It fills up your own soul, it makes you want to cry, it makes you glad you're alive, it lets you come out of you. And that's what we need: we desperately need you."

[Matthew Fitzgerald · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's hard to write a review for this book without having it clouded by what I was expecting from it. I became a fan of NMH a few years ago and have orbited this album for years, returning to it at odd times and delving deeper and deeper into its lyrics and lore each time. So when I learned that this book existed, I was really excited to read a dissection of the music, a literary analysis of the work as a whole. What I got instead was a placement of this album: historically in the Elephant 6 "movement," geographically in the places and people that came together to rehearse and record it, and chronologically in the lives of the people and the years it was released into the world. While I got some of what I expected from it, I can't fault the author for not writing the book that I wanted to read. In the end, it was more of a biography of the band and the album than a plumbing of the work's artistic depths, I can only say that this book helped be understand how the music was made, and not why I find it so beautiful.

[Max Maxwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't want to go on about this book more than I have on every music forum on the Internet, suffice to say that it is excellent, and certainly the best book in the 33⅓ series. Cooper is crisp both in tone and approach to subject matter, and leaves no question unanswered. Here you can learn, for example, that the fuzz on "King of Carrot Flowers 2 & 3" was created after the fact, in the studio, by direct-plugging an acoustic guitar into the soundboard, a serious faux pas to most bands, but of course not to the genius who was Jeff Mangum. It dissects his lyrics and his Anne Frank obsession and involves interviews with all band members. This is the Bible for NMH fans, and I've used it to settle many a debate on the album.

If you are a fan of the band, this book is essential. Otherwise, it's still highly recommended; buy the book and a copy of the record, and listen and learn simultaneously.

[Byron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Maybe the best of the four or five of these 33 1/3 books I've read so far. Which I realize is not saying a whole lot. (I've still got a few more I already bought that I've yet to read, to look forward to.) There's none of that describing what each song sounds like, as if I couldn't just listen to it, to fill up the 120 pages, or whatever these things run. The few comments on each song are things you couldn't just hear, and actually add to my appreciation. There's a lot of back story of how the Elephant 6 collective came to be and how Mangum et al. went about recording In the Aeroplane over the Sea. This was all news to me. because you never really read anything about Neutral Milk Hotel other than that they once made a brilliant album. It remains shrouded in mystery, despite its increasing popularity. Year in and year out it's one of the best-selling albums on vinyl, which just goes to show who's buying vinyl these days. I can't front, I've got one myself.