the internet is a strange and magical place

i've been contemplating all day (read: the last seven minutes) what exactly i'm going to do with this little piece of the internet. maller made some sort of comment today about me making the most depressing blog ever when i told him about it. i figure i give at least one over-emotional diatribe a day--usually two or three--on the ultimate and inexorable victory of soul-crushing reality. i also figure that the only people that are going to read this if anyone does at all are going to be the very people subjected to those awful, wordy, drawn-out rants. so why make them, er, you, go through them again?

i mean, don't get me wrong: i'm sure i'm going to whine occasionally about how everything that's wrong with my life is not my fault but the fault of a world in which a distorted reality is now a necessity to be free. but i think i'd rather leave that for cynical one-liners and sarcastic pop culture references littered throughout writings about music and other media i feel strongly about.

for example, tonight i'm going to talk about neutral milk hotel's in the aeroplane over the sea, which very well could be the best piece of music ever recorded. i am allowed to say things like that because i am inherently over-dramatic, as you should well know. but see, this time, it's true.

i've heard a lot of people say a lot of things about neutral milk hotel, most of it having to do with the band completely disappearing off the face of the earth and mastermind jeff mangum going insane and joining the circus. i don't have any idea what happened to the band, or what happened to mr. mangum himself (i've done a lot of looking, though, and i can say with much certainty that he does not want to be found), but i do know that none of that really matters, because it's just plain impossible that any human beings can ever do anything like areoplane ever again.

as for the millions of things i've heard people say while trying to describe their sound, neutral milk hotel remains entirely unclassifiable. i've never really tried to call it anything other than lo-fi folk, but aeroplane itself jumps all over the place, following a dark, acoustic folk song with a horn-laden funeral march and following that up with a song that, performed by any other band, might as well be pop-punk. well, maybe that's stretching it, but it's certainly different.

mangum sings with his entire soul, stretching himself to bleeding on every single song. as for what he's singing about, well, i really have no idea. well, i have an idea, but to share that with you would take everything that is so obviously painfully personal out of it; like i said, mangum sings with his whole soul, and whatever he's saying, man, he fuckin' means it. the lyrics come together like images in a dream, frightening images that are occasionally very unsettling. some of the lines in "oh comely" still kind of freak me out, but man is it a fantastic song. there's a theme of death that floats in and out of each of these eleven songs, painting a very interesting picture that, as i said before, is going to be different for everyone, and i could never cheapen the experience by assuming what it looked like to mangum himself. regardless, this is what i want playing at my funeral.

it's a very hard album to describe, you see. after reading through that last paragraph, you're probably thinking to yourself "why the hell would i want to listen to that?" well, despite how dark it can get, and despite how frightening it may sound at times, aeroplane makes me happy like no other single album can. it's like life that way, i guess: the downs just make the ups that much better.

anyway, do whatever you can to get yourself this album. you won't find it at best buy, so look in any record store you can or buy it online. or, since you undoubtedly see me every day, just ask me to make you a copy. it's important.