Neutral Milk Hotel’s second album is a landmark, influential work, and not much can be said about it that hasn’t been said before. The album continues to be cited as a great influence on popular indie bands today, bands - such as The Arcade Fire - who enjoy much more success than Neutral Milk ever has.
I remember listening to the album in college, at a time when growing internet bandwidth began to open access to smaller releases, and communities had started to form around smaller bands and labels. The labels that comprise the RIAA began their reactionary legal battles, and less scrupulous bands (read: sellouts), like Metallica started the embarrassing fight for the wrong side. I doubt that any major label executives listened to the album at its release. But, if they did, I imagine that the beauty of the album was shadowed by fear in the knowledge that distribution wasn’t the only thing to worry about. Complete, beautiful albums could be produced, marketed and distributed without a rich uncle. These things, with NMH’s unceremonious hiatus a few years later, reflect a purity that was hard to find at a time when media label consolidation and overwrought music and images were stripping away the soul of popular art. When Mangum yells “how strange it is, to be anything at all” at then end of the title track, I believe that he means it. That lyric, in any other context, would be discounted as Hallmark verse.
If you like the songs, buy the album.
Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.mp3
Also:
Neutral Milk Hotel - Two Headed Boy.mp3 live in Aukland, 2001
is that picture of a print on a t-shirt?
if so, where can i get one?
Yes, it does appear to be a silkscreen. A quick search points to two NMH tees available here
Where can i get a nmh shirt like that?