Reykjavík Grapevine - 15.08.2014, Síða 30

30
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 1 — 2011 30 The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 12 — 2014MUSIC
When I was growing up in southern
California in the ‘90s, the musical
landscape, as I remember it, consisted
almost entirely of pop punk, ska punk,
and whatever else MTV and the local
rock radio station were playing. It
expressed a sort of one-dimensional
yet schizophrenic sensibility—corporate
studio glossiness wearing an awkward
proto-bro mask of juvenile rebellion.
And then, there was light...
Probably everybody can remember
that first band that yelled out to them,
“Hey, there’s more out there,” lifting
their tiny, pubescent bodies by their
comically baggy
cargo pants to show
them a view out
to wider horizons.
For me, that band
was Neutral Milk
Hotel. The view
was the indie
underground. There
was something
authentically fresh
going on in music
that the major labels, despite their
Radioheads, Nirvanas, and Sonic
Youths, had nothing on. Probably it was
the very thing that the corporate labels
had sterilized out of the likes of Beck.
Jeff Mangum, founder of Neutral
Milk Hotel, also co-founded the
Elephant 6 Recording Company—a
collective of musicians with a shared
affinity for experimentation and ‘60s
psychedelic pop. Other Elephant 6
bands included The Apples in Stereo,
Olivia Tremor Control and, later, Of
Montreal. In 1996, Neutral Milk Hotel
released their first album, the fuzz-folk
'On Avery Island.' Through this point
the band was mostly a studio project,
with Mangum playing most of the
instruments himself. The band he put
together to perform the material would
go on to record their 1998 masterpiece,
'In The Aeroplane Over the Sea.'
What makes 'Aeroplane…'
such a legendary album?
There are so many elements that
come together to make this album the
classic that it is. There’s the passion
in Mangum’s utterly unique voice.
There are the powerful poetic visions,
juxtaposing grotesque sexual imagery
against Holocaust violence. There’s
the rawness of the lo-fi compositions,
stripped-down yet masterfully arranged.
There’s the eclectic instrumentation—
ranging from a single acoustic guitar,
to horns, singing saws, echo machines,
bagpipes and all out walls of fuzz. There’s
Mangum’s legendary obsession with
Anne Frank. Perhaps
sealing the deal is
that just as the album
started gaining
the recognition it
deserved, Mangum
stopped playing
shows, quietly
dissolved the band,
and stepped entirely
out of the public
spotlight. He gave us
this beautiful gift, and then disappeared.
The opening strummed chord on
“Two-Headed Boy” still fills me with
the same excitement it did the first time
I heard it almost a decade and a half
ago. Each of the songs on 'Aeroplane…'
has a classic quality to it, and they have
aged well. Mangum often needs little
more than three or four chords to get
his musical ideas across. “The Fool” is a
great example of the band’s instrumental
arrangement skills, while “Holland, 1945”
and “Ghost” are excellent, crushing, fuzz-
folk rockers.
Mangum’s stream-of-thought
approach to writing lyrics delivers some
beautifully surreal results. They present
an ambiguously sane point-of-view. He
flip-flops between grotesquely dark
and sincerely affectionate. It’s hard to
know which is Mangum and which
is channelled. In “Song Against Sex,”
he bids us, “don’t take those pills your
boyfriend gave you, you’re too wonderful
to die.” In “The King of Carrot Flowers
Pts. Two & Three,” he sings, “I love you
Jesus Christ,” though in the liner notes
he clarifies that he attributes no religious
meaning to it. Perhaps what makes it so
beautiful is his ability to channel strong
feelings from various points of view.
In 'Aeroplane…' Mangum draws us
into a totally demented fantasy adventure,
using the surreal as an escape from
the totally horrific reality of the subject
matter, fleeting from one fantastical
situation to another, until a goosebump-
inducing moment five minutes into “Oh
Comely,” when the mood drops, and he
snaps out of the delusion—his heroine is
really dead and he only wishes he could
have time-travelled to save her.
Mangum’s return
I long ago resigned myself to the fact that
I’d discovered Neutral Milk Hotel only too
late, and that I would never get to see
them live. Then suddenly a couple years
ago, out of nowhere, Mangum started
appearing in public: performing a benefit
concert, at an #Occupy protest, and at an
ATP festival.
Now, on August 20th, the classic
'Aeroplane Over The Sea' line-up is
performing here at Harpa.
Þórir performs music as Just Another
Snakecult
www.twitter.com/snakecult
Guess what! The first five folks who drop
us a line to editor@grapevine.is with the
subject line "GIMME SOME NEUTRAL
MILK" (all caps) will get a free ticket
(and one for a friend) to the Neutral Milk
Hotel show at Harpa on August 20. Sin
Fang is opening and everything!
You are born. Not until a couple years later do you start to become a person, in the most ru-
dimentary sense. It’s still not for quite a few years that you start to become your own person.
Or perhaps it starts off okay, but as soon as you begin examining the world beyond yourself
and your family, society’s homogenizing forces take hold of you. You don’t stand a chance.
Culture is monopolized.
Photo
Will Westbrook
Words
Þórir Bogason
A Guided Walking Tour
Dark Deeds
in Reykjavík
Every Thursday in June, July and August at 3pm
This 90 min. walk is at an easy pace
:ŽŝŶƵƐĨŽƌĂĨƵŶŝŶƚƌŽĚƵĐƟŽŶƚŽ/ĐĞůĂŶĚŝĐ
ĐƌŝŵĞĮĐƟŽŶ͕ŐŚŽƐƚƐĂŶĚŐŚŽƵůƐ
Starts at Reykjavík City Library in Tryggvagata 15
/ŶĨŽ͗ǁǁǁ͘ůŝƚĞƌĂƚƵƌĞ͘ŝƐ
Free of charge
ĮƫŶŐǁĂƌŵͲƵƉ͗ƚϮƉŵĞǀĞƌLJdŚƵƌƐĚĂLJǁĞƐĐƌĞĞŶ
Spirits of Iceland͕ĂĮůŵŽŶ/ĐĞůĂŶĚŝĐĨŽůŬůŽƌĞ
ŝŶƚŚĞůŝďƌĂƌLJΖƐϱƚŚŇŽŽƌƐĐƌĞĞŶŝŶŐƌŽŽŵ
www.borgarbokasafn.is
Tel. 411 6100
ListoflicencedTour
OperatorsandTravel
Agencieson: 
visiticeland.com
Licensing and
registration of travel-
related services
The Icelandic Tourist Board issues licences to tour operators and travel agents,
as well as issuing registration to booking services and information centres.
Tour operators and travel agents are required to use a special logo approved
by the Icelandic Tourist Board on all their advertisements and on their Internet
website.
Booking services and information centres are entitled to use a Tourist
Board logo on all their material. The logos below are recognised by the
Icelandic Tourist Board.
The opening strummed
chord on “Two-Head-
ed Boy” still fills me
with the same excite-
ment it did the first
time I heard it almost a
decade and a half ago.
Neutral Milk
Hotel Made Me
Who I Am In praise of the most beloved indie band of all time, on the occasion
of their appearance at Harpa