Book of the Month

Each month we will take a look at a book dedicated to deepening our understanding of music or musicians in some way. This month I've chosen Kim Cooper's, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea.

Neutral Milk Hotel was an indie-rock band that sprung out of the Athens, Georgia scene in the mid-nineties. Their first album, On Avery Island, won critical acclaim but never garnered much of an audience. The second and final release by Neutral Milk Hotel in 1998 was a little album called In The Aeroplane Over The Sea that changed lives and made the world safe for crappy imitators, (The Decemberists) and wonderful innovators (Arcade Fire).

The album is an emotional tour de force; a trip through the mind of the deeply troubled, saddened and yet somehow hopeful, Jeff Mangum. The songs are acoustic in nature but give way to larger sound experimentation, fuzz bass, acrobatic drumming and New Orleans funeral style marching bands. Mangum was inspired to write most of the music for the album after reading Anne Frank's Diary, and many songs revolve around an imagined love affair with Franke, destined to be torn apart by the Nazis. The album deals with lost love through fiercely poetic lyrics, many of which border on the sexually graphic (sample lyric: "Your father made fetuses with flesh-licking ladies/while you and your mother were asleep in the trailer park") but alas, Anne as well as the other cast of characters - ghosts, two-headed boys floating in glass - make their way back to us through reincarnation ("Now she's a little boy in Spain /playing pianos filled with flames") or become one with each other when they are eaten by wild animals ("Feel ourselves inside some strangers stomach/let your skin begin to blend itself with mine"). Not surprisingly, it took quite a while for many fans to warm up to this album, but they did eventually, and Neutral Milk Hotel was filling small clubs every night in college towns across the country. But just as the band began amassing fame, Mangum had a nervous breakdown, disbanded the group and disappeared off the face of the earth.

In the wake of the absence, Neutral Milk Hotel has built a fanatical, religious-like cult following who wake up every morning wondering if today will be the day that Jeff Mangum starts to record a new album (or is that just me?).

Enter Kim Cooper's pocket-sized book titled after the album that inspired it. Cooper traces back the roots of Neutral Milk Hotel to the unlikely town of Ruston, Louisana where the group who would become the Elephant 6 Collective, sparking bands such as Apples In Stereo, Elf Power, Of Montreal, and of course NMH, first met. From there, the book details their slow rise to college-rock domination, tracing their steps from Athens, to Denver, to New York and several places in between.

Cooper, who was clearly allowed access to Mangum (no small feat) and many other close friends from Elephant 6, follows the ever changing mental state of Mangum during the NMH heydays - often fueled by a mix of drugs, depression, hyper-intellectual conversions, night terrors and girl trouble. It tells the story of the band's eventual rise, its overnight obliteration and the ever growing number of listeners who continue to discover the band every day.

Over the last eleven years, Mangum has emerged here and there - onstage with Olivia Tremer Control, or making a guest appearance as drummer on Circulatory System's new album - each time sparking hope that it is a signal of his return to music. Whether or not that ever happens might not be all that important anymore. What he left us with was one of the greatest records in the history of rock music, and that's more than just about everyone else on the planet can say. Still, when someone makes something that really moves you, it's hard not to hope for that person to return. Cooper's book probably isn't for the casual fan, with its detailed accounts of the goings-on behind the scenes in the recording studio and description of every instrument on every song, but then most Neutral Milk Hotel fans aren't casual about their devotion to the band.