In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Encyclopedia
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is the second studio album
Studio album
A studio album is an album made up of tracks recorded in the controlled environment of a recording studio. A studio album contains newly written and recorded or previously unreleased or remixed material, distinguishing itself from a compilation or reissue album of previously recorded material, or...

 by American indie rock
Indie rock
Indie rock is a genre of alternative rock that originated in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1980s. Indie rock is extremely diverse, with sub-genres that include lo-fi, post-rock, math rock, indie pop, dream pop, noise rock, space rock, sadcore, riot grrrl and emo, among others...

 band Neutral Milk Hotel
Neutral Milk Hotel
Neutral Milk Hotel was an American indie rock band formed by singer, guitarist and songwriter Jeff Mangum in the early 1990s. The band was noted for its experimental sound, obscure lyrics and eclectic instrumentation....

, released in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 on February 10, 1998 on Merge Records
Merge Records
Merge Records is an independent record label based in Durham, North Carolina. It was founded in 1989 by Laura Ballance and Mac McCaughan. It began as a way to release music from their band Superchunk and music created by friends, and has expanded to include artists from around the world and records...

. The album was released in the United Kingdom in May 1998 on Blue Rose Records.

Jeff Mangum
Jeff Mangum
Jeff Mangum is a musician best known for being the lyricist, vocalist and guitarist of the band Neutral Milk Hotel, as well as being one of the cofounders of The Elephant 6 Recording Company. Mangum, along with the other founding members of the Elephant 6, attended Ruston High School in the late...

 moved from Athens, Georgia
Athens, Georgia
Athens-Clarke County is a consolidated city–county in U.S. state of Georgia, in the northeastern part of the state, comprising the former City of Athens proper and Clarke County. The University of Georgia is located in this college town and is responsible for the initial growth of the city...

 to Denver, Colorado
Denver, Colorado
The City and County of Denver is the capital and the most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Denver is a consolidated city-county, located in the South Platte River Valley on the western edge of the High Plains just east of the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains...

 to prepare the bulk of the album's material with producer Robert Schneider
Robert Schneider
Robert Peter Schneider is one of the co-founders of The Elephant 6 Recording Company, along with Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss, and Jeff Mangum...

, this time at Schneider's newly created Pet Sounds Studio
Pet Sounds Studio
The Pet Sounds Recording Studio, , was a recording studio located in Lexington, Kentucky , founded by Robert Schneider of The Apples in Stereo and Jim McIntyre of Von Hemmling...

 at the home of Jim McIntyre
Jim McIntyre (musician)
Jim McIntyre is a musician best known as the man behind the Elephant 6 band Von Hemmling. He was also the original bassist for The Apples in Stereo before leaving in 1993. He has written or co-written many early songs for the band, including "Stop Along the Way", "Touch The Water", "To Love The...

.

The album's iconic cover was a collaboration between Mangum and R.E.M.
R.E.M.
R.E.M. was an American rock band formed in Athens, Georgia, in 1980 by singer Michael Stipe, guitarist Peter Buck, bassist Mike Mills and drummer Bill Berry. One of the first popular alternative rock bands, R.E.M. gained early attention due to Buck's ringing, arpeggiated guitar style and Stipe's...

's staff designer, Chris Bilheimer. The general design reflects the taste of Mangum: Bryan Poole said that "[Mangum] was always into that old-timey, magic, semi-circus, turn-of-the-century, penny arcade kind of imagery." One particular piece Mangum showed to Bilheimer was an old European postcard
Postcard
A postcard or post card is a rectangular piece of thick paper or thin cardboard intended for writing and mailing without an envelope....

 with an image of people bathing at a resort, which was then cropped
Cropping (image)
Cropping refers to the removal of the outer parts of an image to improve framing, accentuate subject matter or change aspect ratio. Depending on the application, this may be performed on a physical photograph, artwork or film footage, or achieved digitally using image editing software...

 and altered for the cover. Bilheimer also designed a broadsheet
Broadsheet
Broadsheet is the largest of the various newspaper formats and is characterized by long vertical pages . The term derives from types of popular prints usually just of a single sheet, sold on the streets and containing various types of material, from ballads to political satire. The first broadsheet...

-style lyrics sheet for the album, and inadvertently titled "Holland, 1945
Holland, 1945
"Holland, 1945" is the sixth track from the 1998 Neutral Milk Hotel album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. It was released as a single in October 1998....

" in the process; Mangum wanted to use either "Holland" or "1945" for the song, and Bilheimer suggested he use both.

The album continues to sell well, and was the sixth-best-selling vinyl album
Gramophone record
A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...

 in 2008.

Reception

Initial reviews of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea were mixed. A review in the College Music Journal
College Music Journal
College Music Journal, commonly known as CMJ, is a music events/publishing company which hosts an annual festival in New York City, the CMJ Music Marathon, as well as a weekly magazine of and for the music industry and college radio stations in the United States and Canada. It publishes top 30...

called Aeroplane a "A true lo-fi pop landmark" and cited "Holland, 1945" as a highlight. Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...

's M. Christian McDermott gave the album an 8.7 out of 10, referring to Neutral Milk Hotel as "one psych-rock band making music that's just as catchy as it is frightening" and said that the album "does a credible job of blending Sgt. Pepper
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the eighth studio album by the English rock band The Beatles, released on 1 June 1967 on the Parlophone label and produced by George Martin...

with early 90's lo-fi." A review by Ben Ratliff in Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

was more negative: "Unfortunately, Mangum went straight for the advanced course in aura and texture, skipping basic training in form and selfediting. [...] He sings loudly, straining the limits of an affectless voice. [...] For those not completely sold on its folk charm, Aeroplane is thin-blooded, woolgathering stuff."

Jason Ankeny of Allmusic wrote, "lo-fi yet lush, impenetrable yet wholly accessible, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is either the work of a genius or an utter crackpot, with the truth probably falling somewhere in between." Ankeny also praised Mangum's vocals as "far more emotive" than they were on On Avery Island, but criticized the lyrics as vague in meaning, saying, "While Mangum spins his words with the rapid-fire intensity of a young Dylan
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan is an American singer-songwriter, musician, poet, film director and painter. He has been a major and profoundly influential figure in popular music and culture for five decades. Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly...

, the songs are far too cryptic and abstract to fully sink in — In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is undoubtedly a major statement, but just what it's saying is anyone's guess." Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau
Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...

 rated the album a "Neither", and while he later wrote that the album "convinced alt diehards that maturity can be just as weird as growing up", he also called it "a funereal jape that gets my goat."

Subsequent reviews from Pitchfork and Rolling Stone were more positive; the latter gave the album four of five stars in its 2004 The New Rolling Stone Album Guide: Completely Revised and Updated 4th Edition, with reviewer Roni Sarig writing, "Mangum had put together something resembling an actual band, resulting in a far richer and more organic sound [than On Avery Island]. What's more, the songwriting had blossomed far beyond the bounds of Elephant 6 (or indie rock as a whole), with Mangum etching out timeless transcendentalist pop steeped in a century of American music (from funeral marches to driving punk)." Sarig also commended the album for its "passionate acoustic-guitar strums, irresistible melodies, and lyrics that rarely feel obtuse even when they're nonsensical." Pitchfork, in a 2005 review written by Mark Richardson, gave the album a perfect score. Richardson praised the album's lyrical directness and "kaleidoscopic" musical style. PopMatters
PopMatters
PopMatters is an international webzine of cultural criticism that covers many aspects of popular culture. PopMatters publishes reviews, interviews, and detailed essays on most cultural products and expressions in areas such as music, television, films, books, video games, comics, sports, theater,...

 named a reissue
Reissue
A reissue is the repeated issue of a published work. In common usage, it refers to an album which has been released at least once before and is released again, sometimes with alterations or additions....

 of the album one of the best of 2005, and wrote, "Aeroplane is a manifesto for a different way of making pop. To hear 'Two-Headed Boy' in 2005 is to realize that Mangum's art is simply superb songwriting. But most of the record adds an ingenious mixture of accordion, brass, organ, fuzzed-out guitars, tape, and other glorious miscellanea."

Arcade Fire frontman Win Butler
Win Butler
Win Butler is the lead vocalist and songwriter of the Montreal-based indie rock band Arcade Fire. His wife Régine Chassagne and his brother William Butler are both members of the band.-Life and career:...

 named Aeroplane as a chief reason that his band signed to Merge. Jesse Lacey
Jesse Lacey
Jesse Thomas Lacey is an American musician from Levittown, New York. He is the frontman of the band Brand New.-Musical career:...

 of Brand New
Brand New
Brand New is an American rock band from Long Island, New York. Formed in 2000, the band currently consists of vocalist/guitarist/lyricist Jesse Lacey, guitarist/vocalist/lyricist Vincent Accardi, bassist Garrett Tierney, drummer Brian Lane, and guitarist/keyboardist Derrick Sherman.In the late...

 called In the Aeroplane Over the Sea "the greatest record ever written", and has covered "Holland, 1945", "Oh Comely", and "Two-Headed Boy, Part Two" in concert. In early 2009, Plan-It-X Records artist Madeline Ava covered the entire In the Aeroplane Over the Sea album on ukulele. In August 2010 The Swell Season
The Swell Season
The Swell Season is a folk rock duo formed by Irish musician Glen Hansard and Czech singer and pianist Markéta Irglová. "The Swell Season" name is derived from Hansard's favourite novel by Josef Škvorecký from 1975 bearing the same title...

 covered "Two-Headed Boy" for The AV Club. In 2010 a group called Neutral Uke Hotel began touring playing ukulele covers of all the songs on the album.

Inspiration

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is widely considered to be written about Anne Frank
Anne Frank
Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank is one of the most renowned and most discussed Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Acknowledged for the quality of her writing, her diary has become one of the world's most widely read books, and has been the basis for several plays and films.Born in the city of Frankfurt...

 due to lyrics seemingly referring to her, such as lines referring to her birth and death dates. Though the group has never officially stated that the album is indeed about Frank, it is a popular theory among fans, and Jeff Mangum
Jeff Mangum
Jeff Mangum is a musician best known for being the lyricist, vocalist and guitarist of the band Neutral Milk Hotel, as well as being one of the cofounders of The Elephant 6 Recording Company. Mangum, along with the other founding members of the Elephant 6, attended Ruston High School in the late...

 has mentioned the influence her diary has made on his craft.

Track listing

Personnel

  • Jeff Mangum
    Jeff Mangum
    Jeff Mangum is a musician best known for being the lyricist, vocalist and guitarist of the band Neutral Milk Hotel, as well as being one of the cofounders of The Elephant 6 Recording Company. Mangum, along with the other founding members of the Elephant 6, attended Ruston High School in the late...

     – guitar
    Guitar
    The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

    , vocals, organ
    Organ (music)
    The organ , is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition, dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with...

    , floor tom
    Floor tom
    A floor tom is a double-headed tom-tom drum which usually stands on the floor on three legs. However, they can also be attached to a cymbal stand with a drum clamp....

    , bass guitar
    Bass guitar
    The bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a pick....

    , tape, shortwave radio
    Shortwave
    Shortwave radio refers to the upper MF and all of the HF portion of the radio spectrum, between 1,800–30,000 kHz. Shortwave radio received its name because the wavelengths in this band are shorter than 200 m which marked the original upper limit of the medium frequency band first used...

    , art direction
  • Jeremy Barnes
    Jeremy Barnes
    Jeremy Barnes is an American musician. He was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico, the son of a local businessman. In 1995 he moved to Chicago to attend DePaul University but later dropped out. He joined the band Neutral Milk Hotel in January 1996. The band disbanded in 1998 and Barnes spent time...

     – drums
    Drum kit
    A drum kit is a collection of drums, cymbals and often other percussion instruments, such as cowbells, wood blocks, triangles, chimes, or tambourines, arranged for convenient playing by a single person ....

    , organ
  • Julian Koster
    Julian Koster
    Julian Koster is an American underground musician and storyteller. A member of the Elephant 6 Collective, he is the leader of The Music Tapes, and a former member of Neutral Milk Hotel and Chocolate USA. He is also an influential and long time performer on the singing or Musical Saw...

     – Wandering Genie
    Wandering genie
    The Wandering Genie is a type of organ formerly manufactured by Lowrey. It was used on the album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by multi-instrumentalist Julian Koster of Neutral Milk Hotel....

     organ, singing saw
    Musical saw
    A musical saw, also called a singing saw, is the application of a hand saw as a musical instrument. The sound creates an ethereal tone, very similar to the theremin...

    , bowed banjo
    Banjo
    In the 1830s Sweeney became the first white man to play the banjo on stage. His version of the instrument replaced the gourd with a drum-like sound box and included four full-length strings alongside a short fifth-string. There is no proof, however, that Sweeney invented either innovation. This new...

    , accordion
    Accordion
    The accordion is a box-shaped musical instrument of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone family, sometimes referred to as a squeezebox. A person who plays the accordion is called an accordionist....

    , white noise
    White noise
    White noise is a random signal with a flat power spectral density. In other words, the signal contains equal power within a fixed bandwidth at any center frequency...

  • Scott Spillane
    Scott Spillane
    Scott Spillane is one of the leaders of the Athens, Georgia, USA band The Gerbils. He is also known for his work playing horns for Neutral Milk Hotel, and appearing on albums and in live shows by Elephant 6 artists such as The Olivia Tremor Control, of Montreal and Elf Power.-References:...

     - Trumpet, Trombone, Flugelhorn, Euphonium, Horn Arrangements
  • Robert Schneider
    Robert Schneider
    Robert Peter Schneider is one of the co-founders of The Elephant 6 Recording Company, along with Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss, and Jeff Mangum...

     – home organ, air organ, bass, backing vocals
    Backing vocalist
    A backing vocalist or backing singer is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists...

    , piano
    Piano
    The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...

    , horn arrangements
  • Laura Carter
    Laura Carter
    Laura Carter is a multi-instrumentalist musician from Athens, GA.She is most notably in the indie rock band Elf Power, but has performed with a number of bands within the Elephant Six Collective, such as Nana Grizol, The Gerbils, Neutral Milk Hotel, and Dixie Blood Moustache...

     – zanzithophone
  • Rick Benejamin – trombone
  • Marisa Bissinger – saxophone
    Saxophone
    The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...

    , flugelhorn
  • James Guyatt – percussion
  • Michelle Anderson – Uilleann pipes
    Uilleann pipes
    The uilleann pipes or //; ) are the characteristic national bagpipe of Ireland, their current name, earlier known in English as "union pipes", is a part translation of the Irish-language term píobaí uilleann , from their method of inflation.The bag of the uilleann pipes is inflated by means of a...

  • Chris Bilheimer – art direction
  • Brian Dewan
    Brian Dewan
    Brian Dewan is an artist who works in many media, including art, music, audio-visual performances, decorative painting, furniture design, poetry and musical instrument design. He has produced three albums of songs and concertized extensively as a solo artist, as well as having performed in various...

     – illustrations

Accolades

Publication Country Accolade Year Rank
Amazon.com
Amazon.com
Amazon.com, Inc. is a multinational electronic commerce company headquartered in Seattle, Washington, United States. It is the world's largest online retailer. Amazon has separate websites for the following countries: United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, and...

United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

The 100 Greatest Indie Rock Albums of All Time 2009 #2
Blender
Blender (magazine)
Blender was an American music magazine that billed itself as "the ultimate guide to music and more". It was also known for sometimes steamy pictorials of celebrities....

U.S. 100 Greatest Indie-Rock Albums Ever 2007 #32
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly
Entertainment Weekly is an American magazine, published by the Time division of Time Warner, that covers film, television, music, broadway theatre, books and popular culture...

U.S. Indie Rock 25 2008
*
Magnet
Magnet (magazine)
Magnet is a music magazine which generally focuses on alternative, independent, or out-of-the-mainstream bands.-History:The magazine is published four times a year, and is independently owned and edited by Eric T. Miller. Music magazines with a similar focus in the 1990s era included Option,...

U.S. Top 60 Albums, 1993-2003 2003 #1
Nude as the News U.S. The 100 Most Compelling Albums of the 90s 1999 #3
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media
Pitchfork Media, usually known simply as Pitchfork or P4k, is a Chicago-based daily Internet publication established in 1995 that is devoted to music criticism and commentary, music news, and artist interviews. Its focus is on underground and independent music, especially indie rock...

U.S. Top 100 Albums of the 1990s 2003 #4
Q
Q (magazine)
Q is a popular music magazine published monthly in the United Kingdom.Founders Mark Ellen and David Hepworth were dismayed by the music press of the time, which they felt was ignoring a generation of older music buyers who were buying CDs — then still a new technology...

 magazine
United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

Top 30 Albums of the Past 25 Years 2010 #16
Spin
Spin (magazine)
Spin is a music magazine founded in 1985 by publisher Bob Guccione Jr.-History:In its early years, the magazine was noted for its broad music coverage with an emphasis on college-oriented rock music and on the ongoing emergence of hip-hop. The magazine was eclectic and bold, if sometimes haphazard...

U.S. 100 Greatest Albums, 1985-2005 2005 #97
Village Voice U.S. Pazz & Jop
Pazz & Jop
The Pazz & Jop critics' poll is a poll of music critics run by The Village Voice newspaper. It is compiled every year from the top ten lists of hundreds of music critics...

: Albums of the Year
1998 #15

(*) denotes an unranked list.

Further reading


External links

  • In the Aeroplane over the Sea at Google
    Google
    Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...

    Music
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK