Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998) (1 Viewer)

I've listened to this the odd time over the years and always have been underwhelmed. Holland 1945 is a belter but the rest of the tracks that I could take or leave although listing again for this they do start to 'stick' a bit more. The GBV reference earlier in the thread is interesting- GBV always seemed like a truly creative sprawling mess of greatness but NMH are a fairly insipid and watery impersonations of this... No wonder people love it.
 
This is painful stuff, I hate it. Normally I'd just turn something like this off after a minute and get on with my life but I've had three listens and I still can't really think of anything good to say about it except there is the odd line here and there that seems alright but he wrecks it by singing it. It's not growing on me at all. The singing is awful, This kind of strumming and bellowing stuff - awful, unless it's Syd Barrett and he had a good excuse for it (loosing his mind) to go along with his charm and talent. The playing is abysmal, the lazy slacker brass arrangements suck and the bagpipes were a wretched idea. A load of shite.
 
Uilleann_ans_Bagpipes.png
 
This is painful stuff, I hate it. Normally I'd just turn something like this off after a minute and get on with my life but I've had three listens and I still can't really think of anything good to say about it except there is the odd line here and there that seems alright but he wrecks it by singing it. It's not growing on me at all. The singing is awful, This kind of strumming and bellowing stuff - awful, unless it's Syd Barrett and he had a good excuse for it (loosing his mind) to go along with his charm and talent. The playing is abysmal, the lazy slacker brass arrangements suck and the bagpipes were a wretched idea. A load of shite.

Lol :LOL:

But your second last sentence is very harsh o_O
 
I've always like the album and because it's found it's way onto my work PC it gets a disproportionate number of listens.

Yet..

It's the most pitchfork album ever - yip
His voice is annoying - yip
It's hysterically overrated - yip
The lyrics are awful - yip

It's impossible to disagree with any of the haters. I'm always slightly embarrassed listening to the album because at the back of my mind there's a fear that it's a couple of seconds and a well aimed comment or two from collapsing into a big laughable heap of indie pretension.

I have a fear that I'm going to look back in ten years and say - "Jesus, I can't believe we used to listen to this shit"

If "NPR style indie by numbers" was a category this album would be in there along with all of Okkerville River.
 
A few mentions of GBV. There's a band that gets mentioned a lot on Thumped and who I've never heard. I expect something by them will crop up one of these weeks.
 
This is a super album.

And I dare say..a lyrical masterpiece.I listened to it walking round St.Annes Park and it was class.

Thats right
 
Part of me thinks you need to hear it in your formative years, if you hear it after your teenage years then it's like reading "Catcher in the Rye" - what seems like depth to someone who has yet to live their life is actually just some tosser whining.

I was in my 20's before I heard this album and I still think it's great.

iirc I was a 33 or 34 year old dad when I heard this first, and I love it

I love the lyrics, even though they're a million miles from anything I'd ever write
 
There is a lot of hate for this Album. This album was one of my choices and I love it.

I can't remember when I first got this album but when it came out I was buying a lot of albums. When I bought it, it never registered with me. Either I never got to listen to it or I didn't like not sure.
Then about 10 years ago a friend of mine was talking about it. And I knew I had it, so dug it out and listened to it. At that point I loved it. I don't find his voice that bad, there are many singers who don't have great voices and release some great material.
I agree with @egg_ this album ticks none of my boxes. But for some reason it a whole lot of right.

Jesus Christ I love this Album
 
Maybe it's because I first heard this years ago before being quite so jaded but I still love this yoke too. Yes, he has a voice like a foghorn and there are no dynamics to his strumming, but I love the tunes, the instrumentation, the visceral production, Julian Koster's saw-and-what-have-you additions, the sketchy-but-fun drumming. The songs are so simple that it probably made a million singer-songwriters think that they could do something similar, and they went off and recorded a turd on a stick, but that's hardly these lads' fault. Mangum couldn't repeat the trick either.
 
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