Not a whole lot of people noticed when Neutral Milk Hotel’s cult classic album In an Aeroplane Over the Sea turned 10 last month. The ones who did have the date marked on their calendars made up for it with impassioned tributes to the now-defunct band, a mid-’90s project of Louisiana’s Jeff Magnum. Pitchfork called the album “oddly life-affirming, because it looks right into the face of the heaviest of heavy historical evils” and Stereogum gushed, “If you like it, it’s one of those albums that imprints itself on your psyche.”
A truly transcendent release, In an Aeroplane Over the Sea is based conceptually on the Anne Frank story, but its mystique lies as much in its curious maker as in its musical merit—off-kilter pop, horn-heavy instrumentation, and Magnum’s weary, warbled voice. Soon after the album’s release in 1998, Neutral Milk Hotel was permanently derailed. Debilitated by the pressure of the album’s moderate success, Magnum quickly receded into obscurity, but the album he left behind has only continued to grow in popularity. Here, we examine the ingredients that made In An Aeroplane Over the Sea the very definition of “cult classic.”
1) A Reclusive Frontman: From Syd Barrett to Jandek, a reclusive frontman can contribute a maddening amount of mystery to any band, driving fans to obsessive ends. In Neutral Milk Hotel’s case, Jeff Magnum disbanded the band in 1998, and has since remained out of the spotlight, making only a handful of public appearances. In fact, Magnum has only sporadically performed live in the years following Neutral Milk Hotel’s break-up; in 2001 he played 13 songs at a pub in New Zealand. During that show, Magnum reportedly told the audience he’d suffered a nervous breakdown. In a 2002 interview, Magnum explained, “I went through a period, after Aeroplane, when a lot of the basic assumptions I held about reality started crumbling … It was just very strange timing to get in over my head. I don’t know how it happens ... it was like nobody in the world cared, and then everything just sort of exploded, and then I just sort of dropped off the face of the earth, in my mind and everywhere else.”
2) Minimal Output: Neutral Milk Hotel only released two studio albums over their seven-year career on the indie label Merge (which went on to release albums by other breakthrough acts such as the Arcade Fire and M. Ward). This has driven some hardcore fans to nail down live and demo versions of unreleased songs, piecing them together to form something, anything to supplement these two discs.
3) Revisionist History, People: Sure, everyone may worship In an Aeroplane Over The Sea’s idiosyncratic combination of folk, pop, and rock now, but back when it was released the reaction was mixed and influential publications like Rolling Stone and Pitchfork were more critical upon the album’s release. However, that didn’t stop both publications from writing revised reviews in subsequent years, culminating with Pitchfork caving into pressure and giving the disc a perfect score an inexplicable seven years after its initial release.
4) It Was Part of a Movement: Neutral Milk Hotel were part of The Elephant Six Recording Company, a musical collective and record label that also included indie icons such as the Apples in Stereo, the Olivia Tremor Control, and Of Montreal. However, what makes Elephant Six even more acclaimed is the fact that it followed a career trajectory similar to Magnum himself; after the groups on the label started to become popular, Elephant Six disbanded, thus adding to the collective’s enigmatic existence.
Whatever the reason, or combination of reasons, Magnum’s second album lives on. These days you can hear In an Aeroplane Over the Sea’s demented pop sound present in the music of emerging indie acts like Wolf Parade, Elvis Perkins, and Band of Horses, or in a broader sense, in the music of any artist who takes chances and follows his own voice.