Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (33 1/3)

We adored reading this book, it's got so many cool facts and anecdotes <3

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is one of those albums that, to those of us who love it, is so much more than just some great music collected on a piece of plastic. Both the album itself - so personal, so horriffically beautifully cracked and warm - and the mythology surrounding it and the subsequent disappearance of Jeff Mangum from the music world is too much to collect in one short book. You'd need both a poet and a tabloid journalist to get to grips with all of it, and you'd probably still never capture it; don't explain the Kafkaesque joke, don't drag up the personal details the singer spends so much effort transforming into something that means something to others. That old quote about how writing about music is like dancing about architecture is a copout, but as producer Robert Schneider explains at one point, a recording of music isn't the music itself but just what it sounds like, and...

I digress, which is easy with this album. Cooper, to her credit, doesn't try to overplay her hand; she settles for a mostly fairly objective description, touching on the eccentricities of both Mangum and others surrounding the band without getting too personal, touching on the themes of the album without getting too deeply into analysis (no attempt to shovel the glimpse into the ditch of what each one means, to quote another singer) etc. It's a competent and obviously loving portrait of both the band and the album, recommended to those who want to know more without having their personal experiences with it encrouched upon.

And yet afterwards, I put on the album itself, and as usual I wind up crying ugly cleansing tears by the end as Jeff's voice gets to the sober-mo(u)rning-after of the last chorus, and this book seems like a well-written, well-meaning footnote. Which is not criticism; I'm glad it's there, it just doesn't change much about my personal copy of the album.