essential record of the day: Neutral Milk Hotel--In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998)

my wife bought a copy of On Avery Island, the debut record from Neutral Milk Hotel because Cool Chick 59, who does a show at WCSB here in Cleveland told her it was a good record.

she hated it.

oh, had only Cool Chick 59 told my wife to buy In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, the second (and final?) record from the slightly damaged genius, Jeff Mangum and his band of merry men. from the initial moments of the opening track "The King of Carrot Flowers, pt. 1" to the reprise of "Two Headed Boy pt. 2" Neutral Milk Hotel takes us on such a colorful and varied trip that somehow manages to keep some unifying theme underneath it all.

Every track on In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is brilliant. Mangum provides listeners with challenging and frankly disturbing images lyrically while setting it all to a poppy, rainbow-like sountrack. the final product is marvellously rendered and would explain why everyone has been anxiously awaiting the next Neutral Milk Hotel record. like Waiting for Godot, however, it never seems to come.

and is that necessarily a bad thing? Mangum has produced a masterpiece here and it will be almost impossible for him to trump it. i understand that people thirst to hear or see more of an artist that has impressed them, but sometimes an artist captures a moment and produces something so unforgettable that it becomes revered...and reviled.

that's the problem--people who are into music think they are doing people like my wife a favor when they don't recommend an artist's best work. i remember at a meet and greet with Henry Rollins back in the 90s after he had done his spoken word act at BGSU, i asked him what Coltrane record a novice like myself should check out. He told me to listen to Crescent, because everybody had heard A Love Supreme. but that was the problem--I hadn't. and now, years later, i will tell anyone who asks me to start with Coltrane that they need to start with A Love Supreme, because nothing he did was better.

so too with Neutral Milk Hotel. i think that if i could get my wife to forget On Avery Island, she would like In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Grade: A+