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In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Neutral Milk Hotel
Retail Price (not our price): $14.98
Release Date: 1998-02-10
Manufacturer: Merge Records
Format: Audio CD
Discs: 1

Track List
Now here, for your listening pleasure, the tracks...

Disc 1

Editorial Reviews (supplied by Amazon.com):

1) Amazon.com's Best of 1998
Just from the opening seconds of Neutral Milk Hotel's second album, you know it's going to be special: the acoustic guitar strum is catchy beyond belief, and Jeff Magnum's intonation lends credibility even to a line like "When you were young, you were the King of Carrot Flowers." Listening to In the Aeroplane is like stepping through Alice's looking glass; you enter a fantastic new universe that, while it doesn't always make sense logically, feels like the home you never had. --Randy Silver

2) Amazon.com essential recording
Led by Jeff Magnum, In the Aeroplane over the Sea finds the Neutral Milk Hotel assemblage loosely performing a series of narratives backed by folksy acoustic guitar. But from that springboard, a quiver of instruments (horns, organs, accordions, saws, banjo, zanzithophone, etc.) are layered into a sometimes rootsy, sometimes lo-fi, and often psychedelic mix. Contrary to most pop experimentalists, NMH songs stretch way past the two-minute mark: "Two Headed Boy" transforms from a Guided by Voices-ish romp into a New Orleans big band funeral march, "The Fool" is as catchy as anything Poi Dog Pondering ever produced, and "Holland" builds up to a crescendo of saw, Uillean pipes, a chorus of voices, and fuzzed-out guitar. Simply irresistible. --Jason Verlinde

Customer Reviews (supplied by Amazon.com):
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 out of 5

1) Absolutely Essential Indie Rock   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
I'm not going to waste my time describing this album as many have already done. Basically, if you don't own this album--get it--it will probably change your life. This is an absolutely timeless album by a band to whom scores of newer bands are eternally indebted (cough--The Decemberists--cough). These days it's nearly impossible to be truly innovative as a band, and NMH gets about as close as one can. You really owe it to yourself to get this album, and you should really own "On Avery Island" as well.

2) In My Dreams You're Alive and You're Crying   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
This album is all of humanity bottled into a shot of light through your ears. It makes me cry, it has made me happy, and it has changed the way I see people. I thank you, Jeff Magnum, even though this album took everything and anything you had to say. You gave me, and everyone else who has written reviews about Aeroplane, a reason to think we're not alone.

3) Glad I gave it a listen.   [Rating: 4 out of 5]
It is completely 100% true that you either love this album or hate it. If you have any qualms about this one, listen to the title track or Holland, 1945. You'll (hopefully) be glad you did.

4) One star for being "trippy"   [Rating: 1 out of 5]
Not really any good or memorable songs and the clever, distorted alt-folk cliches really wear thin quickly. Some "songs" are almost unlistenable but boy, are they "alternative". Listen before buying. Or buy an Elliott Smith album, you get songs. With singing...

5) Out of left field & straight to the heart   [Rating: 5 out of 5]
I never would have stumbled on this, my new favorite CD, if not for the 0 degrees of separation fostered by online reviews. A guy from Texas who reviewed a book of mine also reviewed this CD. I loved his description of the music's "cathartic energy and abandon," ordered the CD, and am very glad I did. It's always hard to describe music but I'd say the strains I hear in here come from all over the place: Celtic bagpipes, Herb Albert-style horns, spare alt-country strumming, carnival fun-house mirror riffs, musical saws, and what sounds like crickets. But it all holds together like a wired-up old car with a clanky throaty hum coming from the engine. The vocals are kind of hard and flat and painful, in the best possible way. If Jeff Mangum ever took singing lessons he did the right thing and forgot everything he ever learned. It sounds like he HAS to sing, no two ways about it. His straining to go higher or louder makes the limitations of his voice all the more evident, but it also somehow makes the songs better -- deeper and with more of an edge. He's also an inspired and highly poetic lyricist - if I started quoting I wouldn't stop until I'd transcribed half the album. I'll indulge in just one utterly subjective analogy: Listening to these songs is like hearing a eulogy that's so raw and poetic and elliptical it makes you smile to be still drawing breath.