As we were standing around at Stubb's on Saturday night waiting for Okkervil River to start, I somehow got on the subject of Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea with my friend Ted from BAGeL Radio. We agreed that it's a phenomenal, life-changing, desert-island record that's best appreciated by die-hard music fans. And people generally hear about it through recommendations from friends; I heard about it when I first met John Vanderslice around 2001 and asked him what five records I needed to own but probably didn't.
Sure, Neutral Milk Hotel is not a household name by any means, but Ted and I disagreed on how widely known this record is. I feel that it's a record that most music aficionados and indie rock fans are lucky enough to eventually come to one way or another, and I pointed out that it's consistently a top seller in independent retail and on places like Insound.com (#59 today). Ted agrees on the record's art and influence, but joked that it's the same 1,000 of us buying it over and over again. This Wikipedia article claims In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, released in 1998 on Merge Records, has since sold over 100,000 copies, which is a lot for any record.
So help me out - have you heard of Neutral Milk Hotel's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea?
If you haven't heard In The Aeroplane Over The Sea before, I encourage you to buy it, or at least give it a listen. I don't say this often, but it's an important record; the lyrics draw powerful images, the creativity of the instrumentation is inspiring and influential, and Jeff Mangum's voice is direct and heartbreaking. It is a work of art.
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