Milk of Mangum

Neutral Milk Hotel

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

In 1995, Jeff Mangum, under the name Neutral Milk Hotel, released On Avery Isand. It was a marvelous, if occasionally uneven record that featured exotic instruments, low budget production, and most pointedly, Magum's voice and guitar. People called it everything from"fuzz-folk" to "psychedelic RadioShack." But On Avery Island eluded all quant description. The truth is, no one had ever heard any thing quite like it.

Now Neutral Milk Hotel is back with In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, an eleven track record without a throwaway. Throughout the album, Mangum sings about sex and society outcasts,over the guitars,organs, trombones, and zanthithophones (yes,zanthithophones) which create a lush soundscape. "OhComely,"the record's eight-minute highlight, is a tremendously moving song about loneliness and troubled pasts. Of course that's like saying that War and Peace is about Russia's angst.

Neutral Milk Hotel defy simple soundbites with their deceptively complicated music. Mangum is a singular voice in American music, and that makes his songs endlesly intriguing. What saves the music from being downright obscure, the "secret songs wrapped in boxes" that Mangum sings about, are the undeniable warmth of the music. Not warm like Good Will Hunting. Warm like a radiator.

The best songs on In the Aeroplane Over the Sea excite the listener physically to the point of psychosomatic fever. There probably will not be a better album released this year. And who knows, maybe people will pay Mangum the attention he is due. If Elliot Smith can perform at the Oscars,than why can't Neutral Milk Hotel perform at the Grammy's?

It's probably a little early for Mangum to make room for a gramaphone statuette on his mantle, but if ever their was an award given for best musical collective, he would be a shoe in. Neutral Milk Hotel, along with The Apples in Stereo, Olivia Tremor Control, Of Montreal, and several other bands are part of the Elephant Six Recording Company, a coalition of bands who record together and perform together. Each group makes innovative music that references an encyclopedic history of American music. If this is the future of rock, I can't wait.