Triumphant Return - Neutral Milk Hotel "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" and the start of Concept Album month (?)

On February 10th, 1998, Yngwie Malmsteen released "Facing the Animal," Ricky Martin released "Vuelve" and Neutral Milk Hotel released "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea." Reverting to a childhood of Sesame Street, I will now play "One of these things doesn't belong here" with these three albums. Two of them suck (though I haven't heard them, I will just assume based on the artists) while one is brilliant. Two of them are by artists who basically embody everything I hate about music (pretension, over production, ludicrousness, and having anything to do with Yngwie Malmsteen and Rickie Martin) while the other has just about everything I love. Finally, one is now regarded as a masterpiece, a defining album of the nineties, and a truly great work of art, while the other two are probably absolute balls. I guess what I'm trying to say is Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" is a damned fine album. A DAMNED FINE ALBUM. But why?
Neutral Milk Hotel are/were (they are on an indefinite hiatus - ha vent you people ever heard of Wikipedia? Do I have to research everything?) a band centered around Jeff Mangum, a singer, songwriter and all around intense dude who put the band on hiatus due to an inability to be able to perform his songs, because of the intensely personal nature. I mentioned he seems like an intense dude, right?
So because this is the possible beginning of a little something I will call "Concept Album Month," so that I might better document my love of those oh so pretentious, personal, and generally commercially unsuccessful albums that any musician worth his salt nearly destroys his career making, I felt that I should start with a concept album whose concept is so out there, there was absolutely no way it could work. And yet it works. Sweet King of Carrot Flowers does it work!
What is the concept then? Nothing too special, just an album based loosely around the ability to find beauty in the life and death of Anne Frank, and a Jewish family during WWII he had vivid, life altering dreams about. Pretty easy going stuff, eh? Well, in the hands of Jeff Mangum, it actually is. It is actually a lush, visually stirring album with complex arrangements and instrumentation, and just works in a way that it's difficult concept would suggest it couldn't.
Starting off with the "The King of Carrot Flowers prts. 1&2" (see what I did up there?), all the songs flow into each other to deliver a fairly unified narrative. While not every single song is immediately about Anne Frank, or the family in Mangum's dreams, listening to each one you realize that they in fact are. There are elements of "The Diary of Anne Frank" all throughout, but never in an overtly depressing, or preachy way. Mangum somehow managed to craft lyrics that tell her brief story in a way that is equally moving and entertaining. To me, the whole album is a masterpiece, but to really put it in perspective, you need to listen to the three song cycle of "Two Headed Boy pt.1" the instrumental "The Fool" and the incredible "Holland, 1945." Listening to these three songs, you realize the scope and ambition of Mangum's artistic vision, and more importantly you hear him reach it, even surpass it.
The album is full of interesting music, with horns punctuating most of the songs, a fuzz-bow bass, Wurlitzer's, you name it. It's pretty much unlike any album you'll listen to in terms of both lyrical concept and musicianship. A true masterpiece.
Which begs the question: so, why is it considered an indie masterpiece, and not a mainstream, universally recognized work of genius like the far less superior "OK Computer" released a year earlier? (ok Radiohead fans, bring it, I fucking dare you). My answer: I don't have one. But it ties into my theory of concept albums, all of which tend to be intensely personal to a degree that the average person, who listens to music for an upbeat sound and a catchy chorus doesn't really want to deal with. Open the best song, and only single on your album with the lyrics "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," you might lose the crucial pre-teen market that'll make that record a hit baby. But that is what I love about the concept album, the fact that it is essentially an artist so dedicated to making a deep, intensely personal piece of art they are literally willing to sabotage all commercial potential, how can you not respect that? And when it sounds like "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea?" Perfection.