I can’t remember if I’ve ever posted anything on this blog about one of my favorite bands – and I’m too damn lazy to do a search to see if I have – but if you haven’t ever listened to Neutral Milk Hotel, you should.  They were a loosely formed band – really just the lead singer Jeff Mangum and whomever he happened to be jamming with at the time – based out of Athens, Georgia and part of a group of collaborative musicians called the Elephant 6 Collective.

In 1998, they released what is one of my favorite albums of all time, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.  I can’t remember how or where I heard about it – it may have been when I read an interview with Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and they asked him about the music scene in Athens at the time and he mentioned Neutral Milk Hotel.  Or I may have already had the CD by then – I can’t remember.  But when I first got the CD, I didn’t really like it.  It was kind of hard to get into and wasn’t really my normal style of music – with the horns, etc.  But like with “On the Radio,” by Regina Spektor, little snippets of the lyrics kept catching my attention.  The one that finally got me – that made me really sit down and listen to the entire CD and realize how great it was – was this lyric:  “And here’s where your mother sleeps, and here is the room where your brothers were born, indentions in the sheets, where their bodies once moved but don’t move anymore.”  I was like “Did he just say what I think he said?”  So that got me.

And a lot of other people feel equally strong feelings about In the Aeroplane Over the Sea:  http://onavery.blogspot.com/2007/09/im-very-skeptical-man-and-dont-believe.html

Anyway, Neutral Milk Hotel hasn’t released anything since In the Aeroplane Over the Sea in 1998, at least not that I know of.  But it is still one of my favorite albums, and I continue to hear things in the lyrics that intrigue me/freak me out.  Here are a couple of songs (if they work) and the lyrics:

Two-Headed Boy, Pt. 1

Two-headed boy

All floating in glass

The sun it has passed

Now it’s blacker than black

I can hear as you tap on your jar

I am listening to hear where you are

I am listening to hear where you are

Two-headed boy

Put on Sunday shoes

And dance round the room to accordion keys

With the needle that sings in your heart

Catching signals that sound in the dark

Catching signals that sound in the dark

We will take off our clothes

And they’ll be placing fingers through the notches in your spine

And when all is breaking everything that you could keep inside

Now your eyes ain’t moving now

They just lay there in their clouds

Two-headed boy

With pulleys and weights

Creating a radio played just for two

In the parlor with a moon across her face

And through the music he sweetly displays

Silver speakers that sparkle all day

Made for his lover who’s floating and choking with her hands across her face

And in the dark we will take off our clothes

And they’ll be placing fingers through the notches in your spine

And when all is breaking everything that you could keep inside

Now your eyes ain’t moving now

They just lay there in their clouds

Two-headed boy

There is no reason to grieve

The world that you need is wrapped in gold silver sleeves

Left beneath Christmas trees in the snow

And I will take you and leave you alone

Watching spirals of white softly flow

Over your eyelids and all you did

Will wait until the point when you let go

Holland 1945

The only girl I’ve ever loved

Was born with roses in her eyes

But then they buried her alive

One evening 1945

With just her sister at her side

And only weeks before the guns

All came and rained on everyone

Now she’s a little boy in Spain

Playing pianos filled with flames

On empty rings around the sun

All sing to say my dream has come

But now we must pick up every piece

Of the life we used to love

Just to keep ourselves

At least enough to carry on

And now we ride the circus wheel

With your dark brother wrapped in white

Says it was good to be alive

But now he rides a comet’s flame

And won’t be coming back again

The Earth looks better from a star

That’s right above from where you are

He didn’t mean to make you cry

With sparks that ring and bullets fly

On empty rings around your heart

The world just screams and falls apart

But now we must pick up every piece

Of the life we used to love

Just to keep ourselves

At least enough to carry on

And here’s where your mother sleeps

And here is the room where your brothers were born

Indentions in the sheets

Where their bodies once moved but don’t move anymore

And it’s so sad to see the world agree

That they’d rather see their faces fill with flies

All when I’d want to keep white roses in their eyes

Powered by ScribeFire.