Neutral Milk Hotel – In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

On the one hand, Louisiana’s Neutral Milk Hotel seemingly can’t decide what kind of band they wants to be. Their new CD alternates between confessional singer-songwriter paeans, aching folk-rock textures, improvisational buoyance, and bewildering psychedelic epics marked by kitchen-sink instrumentation.

On the other hand, it’s the group’s recombinant rock scope that makes it so engaging and singular. Hotel leader Jeff Mangum can sound Palace-esque when he wants to (which is often, especially on the title track, the cryptic epic “Oh Comely”, and “Ghost”), but with instrumentation that includes all manner of woodwinds, brass, noise, organs and more, the band is anything but reductionist in its pop approach.

More really is more on In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, as evidenced by Julian Koster’s enchantingly eerie “singing saw” solos (“Ghost” and the title track) and the brash, blistering, fuzzy breaks that populate “The King Of Carrot Flowers Pts. Two & Three” and “Holland 1945”. The untitled, instrumental tenth track is especially awash in frontal lobe-melting sonics, yielding calliope-like nuances, while another short instrumental, “The Fool”, marries a New Orleans funeral march to a Rachel’s-styled post-rock/neo-classical form.

If the music on Aeroplane sounds as surreal as its cover art, that’s because there’s little that Neutral Milk Hotel won’t try in its pursuit to turn eclecticism into art. Aesthetic ambition, misfit pop genius, and uninhibited emotions help make a potent soundscape for this very intriguing band.