GREEN
IN THE AEROPLANE OVER THE SEA NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL
If you’re a fan of independent music you’ve already heard everything you ever needed to hear about this album: that it’s the most important independent album of all time, that it’s a piece of ****, that it’s absolutely revolutionary, unlistenable, a waste of time - a revelation. Yes, criticism of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea can go from ridiculous hate to even more ridiculous praise - a cluster**** of opinions. Forget all of that and think back to 1998 when the album was first released and you were lucky if you had ever heard of the band, or even gave a damn. Critics didn’t get it, people were likewise confused, and hipsterdom was not yet an epidemic. Picture yourself in a key moment in your life when you were upset, ecstatic, depressed, confused, and came home after buying the album because the store clerk said it was a great album to listen to. You unwrap the CD, pop it in your CD player that sometimes skipped and sometimes didn’t, and listen to the album from beginning to end because the first song is so catchy, the second song is so frighteningly brave, and everything after that is so unavoidably strange.
And that’s In The Aeroplane Over The Sea. Like it’s criticism, the music within is a cluster****. The lyrics go from making absolutely no sense, to psychedelic, to heartwrenchingly direct. It’s a web of confusion and passion that bounces the album back and forth from relateable to transcendental, or, in what’s most people’s case, from **** to ****tier. The reason there are, I’m guessing, five detractors for every fan is because most people listen to the album after being raved at that it was all the great things a human being needs. Honestly, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is whatever you want it to be. It could be the most revolutionary album you’ve ever listened to or it could be a great pile of cow dung.
So I won’t call it the greatest album of all time. I won’t even call it the worst. I’ll simply give it a perfect rating because, personally, it’s one of the deepest albums I’ve listened to.
10