SIGNALS THAT SOUND IN THE DARK

Back in ’97 or so I picked up a disc by the Apples in Stereo.

It struck me as frothy and weightless. Let’s call it egg-white soul.

So I broke out my broad brush and painted all the Elephant 6 bands with it.

I’d been through one Paisley Underground already, thank you very much...

This is all by way of explaining my quite-delayed intro to Neutral Milk Hotel’s “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.”

Sure, I’d heard the growing rumble of raves buiding over the years. Seen it pop up on the heady end of many best of the 90’s lists. Heard the title track a number of times and thought it pretty swell.

I finally took the plunge and downloaded the album using my trial subscription to eMusic.

“Aeroplane” is framed by the fear of death, the love of Anne Frank, and the love of death.

It straddles the zigzag line between commitment to a theme and incipient mental illness: “I will float until I learn how to swim/Inside my mother in a garbage bin.”

It is scary, exhilirating, and in the end, life-affirming...