Neutral Milk Hotel'S In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (33 1/3)

Neutral Milk Hotel'S In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (33 1/3)

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, andCreative Loafing recently devoted a cover story to one fan's quest to understand why band leader Jeff Mangum dropped out of sight soon afterAeroplane'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.Review"Much of the NeutralMilk story has been pieced together over the years, but never ascomprehensively as in Kim Cooper's Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Overthe Sea." - Real Detroit Weekly,December 7, 2005 (Real Detroit Weekly)"These books are individual love letters to thealbums themselves, shedding light on the deepest, most tucked-away aspects ofthe creative processes that produced them. While reading about music is neverquite the same as hearing it, and no prose could ever emulate the samecarnival-like, haunting, shiver-inducing sound that is In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Cooper's billet doux comes prettyclose." - Chord Magazine, Winter2005/06 (Chord Magazine)"In her new book 33 1/3: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea... KimCooper... unravels the rumors and demystifies much of the legend that has wounditself around songwriter Jeff Mangum since the Athens band's 1998 breakup... Coopereffectively reminds the reader that Neutral Milk Hotel was a band of realpeople-dear friends- playing instruments, but reinforces the idea that Aerpolane and its songs are a uniquedocument of a time, place and creative community. After only six weeks, thebook has gone back to press for a second printing..."- Chris Hassiotis, Flagpole Magazine"Cooper's 2005 book on NMH and Aeroplane is part of the 33 1/3 series that treats cult-classic albums like dissertation fodder, and hers does a particularly stellar job of demystifying-as much as possible-the destitute and devoted dudes behind Neutral Milk Hotel's underground stardom. Her strengths as a social historian lend this read a certain depth that most Spin writers could never muster. Somehow, she miraculously manages to do an album of this ilk-as resistant to the bitter end as it's been to the spotlight-poetic justice." -Los Angeles Alternative, February 2006 (Los Angeles Alternative)"There is a treasure-trove of trivia for the NMH aficionado, and a contextual introduction and passionate advertisement for the newcomer. Also, with [Cooper's] detailed account of the NMH community, Cooper gives us a sort of normative sociology of the kind of scene that can produce great art." -Ukula Magazine, Spring 2006"Cooper delves into the band's roots, setting up the relationships between all of the musicians that made up the Elephant 6 collective and banks like Apples In Stereo and the Olivia Tremor Control. With her easygoing narrative, Cooper achieves one of the hardest things to do when introducing readers to perfect strangers: she infuses each of the main players with a personality. When finishing In The Aeroplane Over The Sea the reader not only has a sense of who Jess Mangrum and fr