The popularity of Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea never really registered with me until recently. I had assumed it was an album that a lot of people had heard, but the latter-day cult phenomenon surrounding it had eluded me. This book, 29th in Continuum's 33 1/3 series which examines "critically acclaimed and much-loved albums" (think liner notes expanded over a hundred pages), informed me that 50,000 copies of this record have been copped over the last two years - over a third of the album's total sales. Considering Aeroplane was released in 1998, the figure is a little staggering. If Aeroplane isn't seen by everyone as a classic, it seems that the more time passes, the more it will be cemented as such: unpretentious, complicated, postmodern without the sag of postmodernism, it's certainly a word-of-mouth success whose momentum only seems to be growing.
Kim Cooper edits Scram magazine and co-edited a couple of books you might have heard of. And given the dearth of reliable information on the band and the album, she deserves major credit for constructing an oral history this detailed. Her information and quotes come from almost all of the people involved, with the exception of Jeff Mangum himself, who predictably declined to be interviewed (but gave his blessing). And so the most valuable thing about the book is that it cleans and polishes the murky circumstances that hang around Aeroplane. The so-called myth machine of Neutral Milk Hotel is enormous; that Cooper's book is able to clear a little of the smoke around the character of Jeff Mangum, the making of the album, and years of message board speculation is extremely welcome. And it's a good story: full of endearing and eccentric musicians you can't help but admire, Cooper's prose seems to fall with a miraculous ease over their words and personalities.
The book is slim little volume, short and steadily paced: it begins with Jeff and company in elementary school, moves into the formation of the Elephant 6 Collective, then breaks into a gallop when In the Aeroplane Over the Sea begins to form into something palpable. The richest chapter describes the recording sessions for Aeroplane: producer Robert Schneider's detailed explanation of the hows and whys of the recording sessions illuminate not only how an album gets made, but the deeper nature of the recording, the somewhat magical way a constantly changing group of songs by a motley crew of musicians got channeled into an album. And luckily, the griefs that might be raised about the book are few: some might find Cooper's song-by-song analysis a little indulgent, if forgivable, and it certainly doesn't offer anything solid about Jeff Mangum's reasons for dropping out of sight. In fact, because he doesn't offer any words toward it, Mangum is drawn as a mysterious character: built out of his actions and the words of his friends, the introverted and emotional bandleader behind it all is a little sketchy. It's too bad he can't be delineated more than he is, but after all, the book isn't a biography, and Mangum's reclusiveness is part of the allure (make sure to check out the bit about the obsessive fans).
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