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[majorbummertunes]

20 Years of Writing About ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’

Arguably, nothing new could be said about Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. It is unquestionably my favorite album, I’ve listened to it, analyzed it, whatever. I acknowledge the role I would be taking on if I were to write a lengthy, in-depth analysis of the album, and nobody wants to read that, nor would it be important or even marginally interesting. I will do my best to not refer to this album as a cabalistic figure of human artistic perfection, or that there is no other album that deserves such recognition.

But, goddammit, this album has been out for twenty years, and it’s too fucking good to not acknowledge that. In turn, to commemorate this, I decided to collect two of my favorite articles on this album from the past twenty years (also I tried to abstain from making this just an annotated link dump of other people’s articles the best I could - but read them, please).

Happy birthday.

The article that assesses this album the best is “What Neutral Milk Hotel’s ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’ Is Really About,” written by PJ Saurteig for Pop Matters. Even if you have never heard the record or you have but haven’t really thought much about it, this is the best analysis of it that I have ever read and is essential for productive criticism and analysis.

Read it here: https://www.popmatters.com/194640-what-in-the-aeroplane-over-the-sea-is-really-about-2495516849.html

Aeroplane is a historically-based album in some senses; it questions and prods at how we view the past, how those stories harden into facts and how those facts harden into the drudging abstract monotony of history. Jeff Mangum managed to write a series painfully realistic vignettes based on a very well known figure in history - Anne Frank. Though it’s been revealed that the inspiration for the album’s lyricism were his strange, feverish dreams upon reading Anne Frank’s diary (or something like that - you can’t trust anybody about this album’s inspiration) it is important to view In the Aeroplane as a metacommentary of history itself.

Though I am yet to read this book in its entirety, there is an essay in a very interesting collection on the topic of Aeroplane and its relation to the common perception of history. It’s one of the longest meditations on the record I’ve found, and it is fantastic. “The Perverse in Historical Perception: Anne Frank and Neutral Milk Hotel in the Aeroplane over the Sea” by David Rando is the most developed and definitive piece of writing about the album out there.

A PDF of the essay:

https://digitalcommons.trinity.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1062&context=eng_faculty

Looking back upon release, this album’s reviews are almost uninformed - as they should be, considering the album had only been out for a couple of days. This makes me wonder if the legacy of this album has come with time; it’s literally impossible to predict what will be a timeless classic and what won’t be, but those early reviews are almost prophetic in their surface-level understanding and analysis.

I use this album, in my mind at least, as an example of the “concept” album. Of course this isn’t one in a traditional way, but it lends itself to such consideration and observation. It is important to view this album in that way; it asks important questions, gives terrifyingly true answers, and is a brilliant insight into being anything at all.