A Perfect Album!
September 27th, 2005 . by Jilly
Many of you probably know that this year Neutral Milk Hotel’s works were being re-released. Pitchfork reviewed the reissue of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. They gave it a perfect 10! I’ve never seen Pitchfork give any album a perfect score. I imagine that Radiohead’s Ok Computer and My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless are probably on that list. Anyways, I thought Pitchfork’s review was beautifully written. It made me want to go back and listen to this album again.
Here’s an excerpt of the review…
Shortly after the release of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Puncture magazine had a cover story on Neutral Milk Hotel. In it Mangum told of the influence on the record of Anne Frank’s The Diary of a Young Girl. He explained that shortly after releasing On Avery Island he read the book for the first time, and found himself completely overwhelmed with sadness and grief. Back in 1998 this admission made my jaw drop. What the hell? A guy in a rock band saying he was emotionally devastated by a book everyone else in America read for a middle-school assignment? I felt embarrassed for him at first, but then, the more I thought about it and the more I heard the record, I was awed. Mangum’s honesty on this point, translated directly to his music, turned out to be a source of great power.
According to Ultragrrrl, last week on the O.C. they played someone doing a cover of “In the Aeroplane over the Sea”. That ended up being Matt Pond PA. Ultragrrrl also put a link to Dax Riggs doing a nice job of the same cover. You can check it out here.
I saw this post the other day and couldn’t remember where I had seen a list of all the perfect 10 albums on Pitchfork. It came to me in a vision last night. Whatevs did the research a few months ago:
http://www.whatevs.org/2005_06_12_whatevs_archive.html#111887317349088693
There have been 30, or 31 now. Of course, I think Pfork originally gave the album a 9 or so the first go around, so this is a bit of revisionism on their part. But if ever an album deserved to have a 10, this one does.
Jeff:
I agree, I think I could listen to this album over and over. Did you see back in May You Aint’ No Picasso posted a link to an entire Jeff Magnum acoustic solo performance?
http://youaintnopicasso.blogspot.com/2005/05/neutral-milk-hotel-live-videos.html
Looking at that list of 10’s, I have to agree with most of them.
Jilly, check out this site:
http://www.knerd.com/~sashwap/
Click on “Sounds”. You won’t be disappointed.
Wow! Thank you.