if only i had the chance to see them live :(
 

You said it perfectly. That album is so intricate and beautifully written. I first heard it when I was a senior in high school back in 2003 and it was really good but I wasn't completely sold on how brilliant it was. With every listen the lyrics moved through me more and more and became more relevant. I mean, concept album about WWII, who else could have pulled that off in such a way. Nobody. Mangum is amazing and its a shame that he did not make more than two albums. Oh, and on your next tour, please come to Pittsburgh. "

And when we meet on a cloud
I'll be laughing out loud
I'll be laughing with everyone I see
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all"
 

Yep, that's probably one of my top 10 favorite albums, or at least like number 12 or 13.
When I opened up for you in last year, I even included an ode to "King of Carrot Flowers" as the opener:
LISTEN TO IT HERE
 

It is a great record, on par with the Gay Parade! ;)

I've been obsessed with this "Oh Sister" song that never made the Aeroplane record...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gJGA1QJz_E


oh sister you're getting married to some angry twister...
 

'The Fool is the song'
actually how it appears in the middle of the tragedy.
 

I can't say that it affected me that deeply, but then I only heard it less than two years ago. and I was in the midst of hearing all this new amazing music from Wilco, Fugazi, Spoon, New Pornographers, Rufus Wainwright and the Dismemberment Plan (It took me another 6 months to understand and love your music).
It really is an amazing album. Every song is so complete, and it is one of those albums where I constantly change my mind about how each song affects me. It isn't that I find something "new" but that what I know resonates differently with me.
 

its funny, i just wrote a blog that is almost a word for word copy of this, but about that first creed record. we really do think alike.
 

HAHAHA! dude that is hilarious if you're joking. the first Creed album, right? hehe....rock and roll.
 

well, i must say this isn't a great story but alas, i am not a story teller. anyway, the first time i've ever heard NMH was this past summer (i know it's pathetic but give me a break i'm a youngin') ANYWAY, a buddy of mine had some LSD that had gotten wet in his minifridge. Being sensitive to moisture and visibly moist he was unsure of the potency. Myself being the acidhead that i am suggested an experiment. With no regard for any of the plans i may or may not have had that evening i placed about four tabs on my tongue for free with the condition that i text message him with what we were calling the LSD report. Being of the "white fluff" variety it was porous by nature, absorbing the melting water as opposed to diluting the active chemical. ANYWAY, the aforementioned aquaintance made me a playlist on his ipod for the excursion. I would find out later that said playlist was exclusively NMH. Away i flee into the night with my girlfriend and her best friend, oblivious to the 12 hour adventure the awaited me. I put the headphones on and the music is unfamiliar but excellent. I keep the headphones on as the girls jibber-jabber about tampons, hair, boys, or whatever it is that they talk about. I close my eyes and am transported into an alternate dimension, where flying colors and shapes and objects race through my "vision like a strobing light". We arrive at the shopping mall and i am pulled from my vortex and into a new experience. headphones still buried deep i plunge into the sea of patterns and colors and textures and people that this commonplace has morphed into. Nothing is as it seems. The drugs were coming in such frequent intense waves that i felt like i was losing control. We go from there to a local 24 hour breakfast pit and i am too fucked up to eat or even have a cup of coffee. instead i make grotesque shapes with onion rings and straw wrappers. we go from there to the apartment i was squatting at the time. (to understand this you need to understand that i am essentially a glorified homeless man. I prefer the term adventurous nomadic minimalist, everthing i own fitting in an external frame hiking pack.) I am there with these two amazingly beautiful girls, both bisexual, both lying on my bed, which is a series of cots and air matresses. . but thats not that kind of story. My sex was disabled and barely suitable for basic function, nevermind the marathon gang bang these girls could have experienced. instead i vigioursly cut stencils from news paper to bring into substance a painting that i had invision over the night. Not to go into too much detail the painting was basically a stop sign with the red replaced with a space scape of a planet and stars with meteors coming down onto the city scape across the bottom. i will get pix of my paintings up sometime. ANYWAY, i strip off my clothes and put on my resperator for indoor spraypainting and get to painting for about 3 hours. after i was finished the acid had worn down to a jittery anxiety and the sex godesses were long asleep, their faces resembling angels. smoking cigarette after cigatrette i ate the only thing i had had in the last eleven hours a - pot brownie. as the thc took effect i was drawn to sleep as the sun was coming up. the music carried me through bringing me to my center when things got too intense. And that was the first time i was ever graced with the angelic neutral milk hotel. Thanks for listening!!!
 

Here here!

Also they are easy to play and sing. A lot of people don't realize how popular they really are. I've met a lot of people who have talked to me only because they heard me playing king of carrot flowers.
 

I LOVE Neutral Milk Hotel!

My friend and I discovered them on a lazy summer morning, (we'd stayed up all night,) and we loved the music so much we ripped a CD full of Neutral Milk Hotel, Peace Burial At Sea, Death Cab For Cutie, Modest Mouse, The Shins, and some weird band called 'Of Montreal' or something... Anywho, we went to the beach and enjoyed the chill tunes, and eventually made it back to my friends' house sometime around 10 pm. He lives in front of a golf course, so we walked to his vast backyard and sat on the hill near the bend of the 5th hole and blasted Neutral Milk Hotel actually forgetting about some of the other music at the time.

It was a grand day.

Awesome blog, guys!
 

Despite your moving golf course reverie, I'm fairly certain you are the antithesis of the music you've unwittingly sullied.
 

Scratch that, I'm the zero... just hated to hear that you ripped it. Especially from a band like this who could use the fan support, it seems unfortunate.
 

This was one of the few albums in my life that had me immediately smitten (Wowee Zowee, Tonight's the Night, Hunky Dory, and Gay Parade are the few others I can think of.) At first it was the sound of it. It was gritty and dirty but not really lo-fi. Every texture seemed meticulously crafted. Then the spirits of the songs overtook me. It's like a mutant tossed salad of emotions. What other album makes to want to cry and jump around at the same time? And the lyrics; they seem like an unsolvable labyrinth and yet they bring forth very specific imagery and emotions. God, I played this album for everyone when I first bought it. This is truly a unique creature. I hope it reaches a Velvet Underground level of delayed appreciation so it doesn't slip into obscurity for the ages.
 

I found this album only a few years ago, but it was a complete relevation and seemed to give me a new perspective that was more hopeful; even in its most horrific images there's beauty. I agree that in a way it's great that the album has remained fairly underground, but I reckon it's one of the few albums everyone should own, or at least hear, because it transcends whatever genre you might ascribe to it... unless that genre is 'transcendent', I guess... I dunno, I suppose that when I heard it, I felt that it was made for me, and I'm sure others feel like that too. Also gotta mention how perfect the instrumentation/arrangements/poduction are. Nothing is out of place, and it has an immediacy of a live show. I guess that's what makes it so timeless.

Thanks for this post :)

Becky (though the boy will agree, too!)
 

first album that got me into all the elephant 6 stuff. a lot of good memories with this album...
 

I agree, it's a beautiful album. The sincerity in the songs is beautiful. You can tell Jeff Mangum was genuinely inspired. I wrote a term paper faulting America for waiting to assist stopping the Holocaust even though we had the means to do so, and my idea for the paper came from listening to "Aeroplane" on repeat for days. It takes me to a different place.
 

Yes yeah and such and sot, I do as much agree.


Harnk
 

Omfg neutral milk hotel rock i wish they wud come back i love them



WOOT OF MONTREAL!!!!
 

I never know how to explain this album to people when I try to express just how different it is than anything else I have ever heard. No one can truly understand until they listen to it. I have never heard any music convey so much emotion, and just inherently.
I hope everyone sometime has the experience of just jamming out Oh Comely with a few good friends, just pouring your heart into it.
 

Mangum/Barnes/Spillane/Koster/Schneider/Carter/Benejamin/Bissinger/Anderson.....FOR LIFE!!!!!!!
 

I gave a copy of ITAOTS to friends in college who only listened to Phish and the Grateful Dead. The album made them cry and they've loved it ever since. I may have never met of Montreal if it had not been for NMH.
 

in march of 2001, my friend matt put on the record and the 1st song blew my away. and he showed me a little bit of the song IN THE AREOPLANE OVER THE SEA! i had to get the album the next day and i listened to it all night; about 5 times or so in a row. a BIG impact on my life. JEFF MANGUM is a huge influence on my music. thanks jeff and robert and all of elephant 6. i love them all.
 

Has it really been ten years?!? There aren't that many records where the whole album is in high rotation at my house. This is one. Every time I put it on, I find something new to love. It's a very strange thing to try to describe how I feel about this record: I just love it. Thanks, Jeff.
 

bought it on vinyl at wuxtry. 2002? a valentines present for a good gal. i remember holding the case for it. it was so beautiful. still is.
 

aren't a lot of the songs on that album about Anne Frank?
 

well actually, 'm one of the people who are just now getting to explore the wonders of NMH. i definately DO enjoy the hell outta their music though! -wonderul, real-sounding stuff!
:)
 

its one of the most original and beautiful records out there. i wouldn't change a thing about it.
 

My friend introduced me to NMH a year ago. The first couple times I listened to it, his voice gave me a brain-splitting headache. I laughed at my friend when she asked "don't you love it?" and forgot about the album for a long time. By chance, I stumbled upon it a few months later and I've been yelling along with the lyrics since then. When I listen to it, I'm reminded of the world. I don't know if anybody understands that, but it taps into some sort of cosmic embrace of what life really is, through some guy's vocal cords.
 

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is pretty much my favo(u)rite love song of all time. I don't even know if it should be considered a love song, but I love it, so there.
 

i think that "Oh Comely" is one of the most beautiful songs ever written.
 

two-headed boy, pt. 2 is the best song of all time.
"in my dreams you're alive and you're crying" still sends shivers down my spine. it is one of the most chilling, and most beautiful lines i've heard, anywhere. such vivid, haunting imagery.
i got into backwards from most people. it was actually OM that got me into elephant 6. when i first moved to college, i would frequent the coffeehouse circuit with a friend of mine who played 'tim, i wish you were born a girl'. i was absolutely floored. he got me into OM, and, through them, the E6 and NMH. Aeroplane is my favorite album of all time, with only "Ys" by Joanna Newsom providing a similar emotional response, as well as an inability for me to get sick of/stop listening to it.
i don't mean to come promote other bands in OMs blog. hissing fauna and satanic panic are in my top 5, and coquelicot is in my top 10. mr. barnes is one of the most amazing musical geniuses i've ever heard.
enough love for everyone.
 

You really summed it up, Neutral Milk Hotel is simply incredible. I love getting lost in the lyrics. The sound is so unique and hauntingly beautiful. I've been inspired, comforted, and so many more things by that album. Nothing more I can even say.
 

There was a time in my life where I suffered from what I can only describe as ITAOTS-induced insanity. I listened to that album multiple times every day for at least three months straight. There's little I can say about it that hasn't been said before, so I'll limit it to a few things:

1. That album is pure intensity. No one has ever effectively covered any of those songs. They're not complicated songs musically, but no one can match their intensity.

2. As a result of that album, I started to believe that people have the ability to tap into a mystical force through art. However, as the years have passed and I'm further away from that original feeling (my obsession came in year 2000), I'm sad to say I've mostly lost that belief.

3. That album has the rare ability to give you that pain in your heart that is mixed with a bit of joy -- and that's what brings people to tears, I think. The best comparison I can come up with is to that movie "Life Is Beautiful" -- it's so over-the-top, and it's so tragic, yet it's also joyous, and it just makes you feel so emotionally overwhelmed. And that's how ITAOTS is.
 

ITAOTS is the recored that lead me to the genius that is Kevin Barnes and Of Montreal!
 

ITAOTS is the recored that lead me to the genius that is Kevin Barns and Of Montreal!
 

It's a mind fuck but check it.
http://goldenfiddle.com/node/4870
 

i usually think that saying "that album or band changed my life" is an overblown, overused statement, but i think it actually holds true for me with "in the aeroplane over the sea".

it's probably the most amazing album i've ever listened to. it's a great album to actually discuss it's greatness when you find other people that also appreciate it. i wish that i would have been able to see NMH live, but alas, at the time he was still playing, i was just about 12 and into really bullshitty music.
 

last week, i was starting to fall asleep and i started dreaming a song as sometimes happens, and it was in the voice and style of neutral milk hotel. i only grabbed a partial lyric and visual, of this tiny children's picture book girl on the edge of a huge book in a field, with enormous wispy fauna around about, twining around itself as she swung her legs and the voice was singing, "sitting on the edge of a manuscript/ waiting for the feather to drop" but the words were better and synesthetic cause it was a dream. and i could still hear the song in my head when i woke up to tell my friend, but my throat wouldn't make the sounds. i haven't heard the record in years either, so it must be well incorporated in my subconscious.
 

It is really hard to believe that this album is ten years old. It has not aged at all. I think the reason is because "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" is so much more than an album of songs. It is an experience. It is raw emotion. It is creativity on another level. This album has affected me profoundly in ways words cannot express. I know this sounds crazy, but I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Respects.
 

i'm unsure that i could properly describe what this album and this band did for the musical consciousness. but i think i'll give it a whirl.

this album absolutely defines the innermost thoughts of my (semifucked) piece of brainmatter. it's pungent with truth and absolutely overflowing with beauty. every single time i listen to it, i can hardly understand how all of this emotion and general pressure in the gut could be squeezed into any form other than musical bomb; and yet so peacefully does this stream of AWESOME trickle into my ear places. i get really disoriented when confronted with questions about this album from nonbelievers, i'm sure you'd understand, it's the questions that cause you to laugh and immediately black out. i'd venture to say that everyone who finds their own appreciation for this album becomes a part of this big family of People Who Get It.

i'm glad you guys get it.

i guess we're not so alone or something.

who knows the implications, really.
 

i couldn't have said it better! i first fell in love with NMH in 1999, the same year i fell in love with of Montreal, OTC, Apples in Stereo, and all the other amazing bands associated with the Elephant 6 collective. i literally spent 2 weeks listening to nothing but ITAOTS on repeat when i first got it. in fact i spent about a year listening exclusively to E6 bands before i was ready to rejoin the larger musical world. almost 10 years later, my biggest influence as a musician is still jef mangum (though kevin is definitely in the top 5). i only wish i could have seen him live. i will always hold a dream in my heart that one day he will resume his musical activities, but even if he never doesn't, he left the world with 2 of the greatest albums it may ever know. the raw emotional power of his music is still unparalleled!
 

i've never ben given the chance to see them live, but i stumbled upon their album a few years ago and its been one of my favorites since. holland 1945 is ridiculously powerful, and upbeat for such a solemn song. oh, comely is beautiful as well.
i was so excited to see that your acronym meant in the aeroplane over the sea.
love love love love love
 

Thank you for suggesting that.
I couldn't get it on CD, but it was in used on Vinyl at the Record store I volunteer at.

-Jake!
 

that record really is pretty magical.
in thinking of a way to celebrate all i could really do was play the songs over and over. i decided to record my own version of aeroplane as tribute, and it's up on my page until the end of this month if anyone here would like to hear it.
that album is one of the few that have inspired me consistently through the years, and in different ways with each listen.
 

Jeff Mangum is one of the greatest living or dead songwriters on this earth. Its painful that I've never had the chance to see them or him live and that there is no more NMH. And if I had been able to the feeling I get from hearing these songs would still hurt just as bad. Its painful to listen to beauty you can't comprehend.
 

It's a bit heartbreaking sometimes to listen to the record....in that speacial way that sadness can make you feel as if your sleep walking or something. I wasn't instantly a fan, it took a few pivital listens for me to really connect with it. It marks a great time in life for alot of people..i also feel pained and i'm sure many youngins like myself can share this feeling..we may never see "jeff" live....."lets us hope".........maybe it's the rawity of the situation that brings him to such glorification amungst us true music lovers.
 

When I was quite young I was crawling under my brothers bed and I found a few C.D.'s. Amongst them was NMH's "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea." I think it may have warped my twelve year old mind, but it warped it in a good way that I don't regret. Ever since then I have been following E6 bands with a sort of obsession that I've never had for any other music scene. I'm really glad I was the snoopy little kid who would hide under my brother's bed looking back on it.
 

First off, whoever wrote this makes perfect sense out of the entire album. When I am old and grey and have forgotten every piece of music I used to cherish, this will still be the single work that I want to keep with me forever. ITAOTS opened up my musical world to nearly everything I love today. Jeff Mangum deserves the majority of the credit. I was reading some lame teen magazine back in the 8th grade and stumbled upon an interview with, I believe, the guitarist from Death Cab For Cutie (which, at the time, I thought was really cool and obscure, for some reason). He picked his top ten favorite albums of all time. This was one of them, grouped together with Nine Inch Nails and Miles Davis and Pixies and R.E.M. and Brian Eno. There it was. "This album has some of the best lyrics ever written... as close as music can come to literature without becoming trite". I went to check it out on trusty limewire, and... I don't even know. I can't portray this with words. Nonstop, for weeks, this was the only music I listened to. Neutral Milk Hotel. I love everything about it. The painful moans of Mangum, the simply haunting lyrics, all of it. This album made me pick up a guitar. Never, in the time span of one short album, have I had the capacity to feel so many emotions! The pain! The beauty! For this album, I will be forever grateful.
 

ITAOTS is such a good fricken album!!
i love just like jamming to ITAOTS the song on my guitar and singing its so beautiful....
LOVE IT!