Free Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea by Kim Cooper Page B

would cook up big pots of tofu, rice and BBQ sauce for breakfast, lunch and dinner. One of the bigger expenses was Scott Spillane’s cigarette bill, a provision of his appearance on the album.
    The sessions received a weird blessing on August 11, when a freak hailstorm struck Denver, dropping more than an inch of rain in ten minutes and doing $150,000,000 in property damage. The band members huddled in Martyn and Rebecca’s little kitchen, listening as the sky unleashed a Fortean tribute to the chaos that had been briefly contained.
    And when it was all finished, and the vibrant, changeable songs were snared in digital form on a palm-sized rectangle of DAT tape, Jeff and Jeremy took the bus home to Athens, the sweat of ten years of writing and nearly twice as many months collaboration safely tucked away at their feet. Jeremythought how glad he was to have been part of it. But the adventure was just beginning. And in beginning, the seeds of its ending were striated, sowed and ready to sprout. No one’s life would ever be the same.

The songs
    When I first proposed writing about
In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
, I told the folks at Continuum that I wasn’t interested in subjecting the album to a literal-minded line analysis, sucking all the mystery out of the lyrics and spoiling their effects. Nevertheless, as I spoke with the musicians and their associates, interesting stories, details and connections emerged. I found these added to my enjoyment of the album. If you love Neutral Milk Hotel, then these songs mean something particular to you, and no writer’s ruminations can negate that meaning. Consider the following as a series of cover versions, a layering of possible and partial interpretations that are intended to be transparent; the album remains the primary text, and your reaction to it the secondary one.
The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. One
    In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
begins with an aggressive acoustic strum, punk’s energy filtered through traditionaltroubadour strings. From the outset, the singer addresses a first person listener, reminding him what he was when young (the titular monarch) and listing horrors and pleasures of that distant time. The royal parents menace each other while singer and subject form a union that seems as holy as it’s carnal. There are hints of incest (who is this singer/lover who observes so intimately, if not a sibling?), of cannibalism (mom sticks the fork into daddy’s shoulder, and presuming he’s a cooked carrot how smoothly it would slide), of Southern religious mania (holy roller rattlesnakes) and of the gypsy Tarot (the tower tumbling through the trees).
    If this is your first experience with Neutral Milk Hotel—and for most, who’ve had the second album recommended to them by an acolyte, it is—what’s immediately clear is that Neutral Milk Hotel is no ordinary pop band, riffing redundantly on stock topics of love, aggression and consumption. There’s more heart, imagination and eclecticism here, and a singing style that fuses holy cantor song with the hysterical expressions of schizophrenics compelled to communicate. And yet it’s all so gloriously catchy that even the most startling elements rest comfortably among the whole.
    Robert Schneider says this song has the feeling in it of the woods behind Jeff’s house in Ruston.
The King of Carrot Flowers Pts. Two & Three
    “Pt. One” ends with a spacey drone that oozes into this track’s initial gutsy cry “I love you Jesus Christ,” which is the spot where aggressively non-Christian listeners have to make a conscious decision to stay with the music. But is the expression one of love for the Savior or for another person, punctuated by the emphatic invocation of J.C.? Jeff repeatedlymade it clear that he was singing about Jesus, but the alternative interpretation is there for those who need it. Either way, it feels real and raw and fearless, and soon Jeff’s voice is running away with him, a swirl of disjointed