So Jeff Mangum...a name that as of right now in the mainstream music world doesn't mean anything. In fact back in the mid-nineties it didn't pack that big of a punch either...but dig a little deeper, read a pitchfork media review or two, and this might have been the greatest songwriter to come out of the 90's. He is the heart and soul behind what was once known for one EP and two albums as Neutral Milk Hotel. A band that was so experimental that there was no time for them to be ahead of...they just were. But out of those three musical offerings only one is brought up on a regular "indie" basis...the utter masterpiece that is "In The Aeroplane Over The Sea". I don't know what to say about this album that hasn't been said by countless indie music sites and magazine editors, except that it is...fucking...FEARLESS. And to be creative, to be good at it, you need to be fearless. You need to be so oblivious to what is hip and cool, that you scare the shit out of everyone around you...especially the critics. Jeff Mangum was/is, at least from what I've seen through live videos, a very shy person. But put that guitar in his hands and a mic in front of his mouth and you get a whole new being. A vocal range that is more of a roller coaster then a staircase. And a guitar armed with no more then 3 or 4 basic chords that will twist and turn so many times that by the end of the song you'd swear you've heard every note there is to offer.
This is an album based on, albeit some would say loosely, on the "Diary of a Young Girl" or as most might know it "The Diary of Anne Frank". That's right, the "Diary of Anne Frank"...not about Jeff's girlfriend or ex-girlfriend and how he is going to win her back, or what it is to be indie or modern or even his hometown...it's about in very abstract terms, his utter depression over the loss of this young girl decades ago, and how he wants nothing more in the world then to go back and save her.
Think about that.
I read somewhere that Jeff admitting to that at the time might have been the most uncool thing someone could have been admitting to in music. Writing an album about a book most people dread to read in elementary-middle school. Again remember it's all about being oblivious to what is cool and perhaps...uncool.
Now...throw in some of the most beautifully written lyrical imagery you'll ever hear, some wildly eccentric horns, guitars (fuzzy or acoustic), and the most pained voice that I've ever heard, and you have the masterpiece that I would gladly put up there with "A Night at the Opera", "Born to Run", and "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band".
After the album was released Neutral Milk Hotel toured, and then during it's rapid surge in popularity broke up. Jeff Mangum had had enough. Hopefully that last chord and phrase we hear uttered from Jeff's mouth on "Two-Headed Boy Pt. Two" isn't the last we ever hear from him, but if it is, I know I will, along with fans of him, his music, and his band will always "hold it close and keep it here with me..."
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