I cannot understate my love for Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. I have a wall dedicated to Neutral Milk Hotel artifacts – signed vinyl, two posters of Jeff Mangum’s Live at Jittery Joe’s, a Neutral Milk Hotel clock, and a poster of Aeroplane, alongside my Neutral Milk Hotel mousepad, at least four Neutral Milk Hotel shirts, and multiple signed copies of the band’s discography. The peak in my twenty-year-old life (which is how old Aeroplane turned this year) is when I met Jeff Mangum in front of a vegetarian restaurant – which I am well aware is perhaps the most hipster event conceivable.

Unhealthy obsessions aside, Aeroplane is a perfect album to me. In fact, some things are so precious that writing about them becomes impossible. In every strum, note, breath, and passing second, an explosion of meaning suspends any critical judgement on the album. It is the apex of art itself. With full awareness that I am writing the second coming of Pitchfork’s Kid A review, I believe dialectics of human creativity culminated in Aeroplane’s release in 1998.

There are great Aeroplane analyses out there: PJ Sauerteig’s “What Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea Is Really About,” or the excellent 33 1/3 book on Aeroplane by Kim Cooper – but for me, any textual analysis of Aeroplane remains ungraspable. It is so close to my heart that my words become drowned by my fluttering palpitations, beating in time with Jeff’s voice. Historically, Aeroplane was a game-changer. Neutral Milk Hotel showed that authenticity was not simply an expression of modern disconnection, but a possibility of transfiguring the world we inhabited. Prior to Aeroplane, indie rock was always funneled through a lens of ennui and malaise. Whether it be Elliott Smith or Modest Mouse, authenticity was synonymous with depression. Meanwhile, the playful side of indie rock – Beck, Guided by Voices, Pavement, etc. – was drenched in layers of irony. Aeroplane moved indie-rock from the ironic to the passionate. Neutral Milk Hotel freed us from self-reflexive irony and depressive self-loathing of yesteryear. Musicians could speak about radiowires and Jesus Christ in a language of new sincerity. Their influence is direct but also metaphysical, inspiring everyone from Arcade Fire to Stephen Colbert. The album changed the rules of how we interact with music in a larger social, even, existential epoch.

“In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” album cover art (image courtesy of The Odyssey Online)

Aeroplane is the place where subjective and objective perceptions of the world come together to create new possibilities of being. Jeff became Orpheus, descending into the underworld to save Eurydice (Anne Frank). He grabs her hand and they go through trials of two-headed boys and a “stranger’s stomach.” Tragically, Anne is not saved, but through their journey, we discover truths about humanity. Good art shows us what it means to really be human. When, in the title track, Jeff liberates us from our bodies and gifts us the ability to see the planet unbounded from our subjectivity (“I have found in this place/That is circling all around the sun” is such a lovely way to describe Earth) in a transformative surreal strangeness, we are given a way out of our solipsism. Jeff passionately sings “we know who our enemies are” at the end of “Oh Comely” and Scott’s trumpets blend into his voice. It is as if voice, instrument, and lyrics meld together to reveal the affective interconnectedness that exists at the core of humanity itself.

The mystery of Aeroplane is a mystery of the cosmos itself. Authenticity crosses into the realm of Truth – Jeff’s voice vibrates with so much honesty that he seems to uncover the secrets of the universe itself. Although it precedes the release of Aeroplane, “Engine,” a lullaby song with nectarine-sweet notes, already describes the transformative authenticity of Neutral Milk Hotel. Jeff Mangum notes that he “was depressed and [his] life was completely crumbling around [him]. And then [he] wrote that song and got really happy for five minutes.” The band articulates a new sincerity different from nostalgic postmodern pastiche – they reinvent our capacity to interact with the past. While early Neutral Milk Hotel (fun fact: they were initially called Milk) helped Jeff traverse the late-capitalistic postmodern world a little more, it is through Aeroplane that he gives that gift to us. Aeroplane is a roadmap to life.

The album hasn’t aged a day in the past twenty years. It is a timeless work that has existed in the crevices of humanity since the dawn of creation. Jumping between temporal and spatial realities, from 1945 to 1998 to 2018, from Spain to Holland to America/Georgia, Jeff takes us to a place few artists have gone before. For 39 minutes and 51 seconds, he becomes a guide to our messy world. The album’s journey is arduous and difficult: it requires you to really listen. But if you are willing to put in the effort, you’ll realize that the truth is only a few notes away.