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Friday, Jul 10, 2009
It's been five years since Neutral Milk Hotel released their masterpiece and disbanded. With the arrival of the Decemberists, have indie-rock obsessives (like me) found a new mannered, quirky band to love?
Sep 16, 2003 | The Decemberists, a band from Portland, Ore., have been releasing music for two years, but it took until this summer's rerelease of the 2002 album "Castaways and Cutouts" for them to form a blip on the national radar. Fresh off a wave of critical acclaim for that record, mostly revolving around Colin Meloy's charming dime-novel caricatures, comes the follow-up, "Her Majesty, the Decemberists." There's no doubt that Meloy is a new voice. Critics have compared him to a whole shooting gallery of creeped-out outsiders, from artist Edward Gorey to the Kinks' Ray Davies. But one sticks particularly.
I have an instant affection for Meloy and the Decemberists. And the reason for my instant affection, which is admittedly unfair to all parties, is that they uncannily resemble an entirely different band: Neutral Milk Hotel. And it's not that the Decemberists merely remind me of Jeff Mangum's now-defunct outfit -- they sound like them right down to the smallest of mannerisms: the nasal faux-English accent, the ragtag marching rhythms, the fascination with the Old World, the songs about dead European girls. It's forgivable, because it doesn't sound exactly intentional. It also makes me open myself to their new album more than I would otherwise. Maybe too much.
On one hand, I could rationalize my attraction by saying that I am interested in the Decemberists for the same reasons I was initially interested in Neutral Milk Hotel. But, really, that's not true. Jeff Mangum hasn't made an album of new music since "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" in 1998. "Aeroplane" is as perfect and autonomous a record as ever has been made. One need not know anything about Neutral Milk Hotel's previous history to understand it. (Though dealing with their later story frequently becomes a large part of one's experience with it.)
There's nothing overtly difficult about "Aeroplane." In fact, the melodies and chord changes are almost instantly familiar: simple songs constructed out of the most obvious progressions. Parts are, that most hoary of clichés, Beatle-esque. Still, the album doesn't quite sound like anything else ever recorded. The songs swim with surreal scenes. "Cocoa leaves along the border/ Sweetness sings from every corner/ Cars careening from the clouds/ The bridges burst and twist around," Mangum sings in a typical verse.
From the lyrics spring the production and the arrangements: elegantly mournful horns bursting in bittersweet bouquets across a sky of crackling sheet noise, melodies streaking by from singing saws, accordions and zanzithophones. And Mangum's voice, soaring warmly adrift in this completely bizarre world. The album is even mixed differently -- the levels are cranked up just hotter than normal -- which makes listening to it that much more immediate. The experience of "Aeroplane" is cathartic: noise breaking down one world while Mangum's voice reinforces another.
Just as "Aeroplane" doesn't sound like other records, listeners don't relate to it like other records, either. A word that shows up time and time again in fans' testimonials is "healing." Instead of comparing it to other albums, listeners frequently cite deep-seated upheavals and realizations -- broken love affairs, suicides, dying relatives. Which is perhaps why, five years after Neutral Milk Hotel last set foot on the modest club stages they made their home, people still care deeply about "Aeroplane." The album continues to sell briskly. After all, it takes time for associations to build up. In its 10th anniversary issue, Magnet voted it the best album of the past decade, above Nirvana's "In Utero" and Radiohead's "OK Computer," William Bowers calling it "indie rock's 'Amazing Grace.'" The Atlanta alt-weekly Creative Loafing recently devoted a cover feature to the album.
Naturally, one goes looking for more. Maybe that's just the nature of living in an art world driven by commerce and progress -- one always instinctively searches for the next step. There is no more, though. At least not yet. A year after "Aeroplane's" release, as the story goes, Mangum got sick and, well, just sorta disappeared from public life. Right now, he's off living in Halifax, Nova Scotia -- or maybe in Brooklyn, N.Y. Not even his friends seem to know for sure. No matter where he is physically, he's surely made his own world. And, for now, that means no music. Understanding this seems an inevitable, even beautiful, part of a listener's relationship with "Aeroplane."
My own story with "Aeroplane" has several chapters: It was the music that cooed me to sleep, jobless and groundless, after graduating from college; the music that propelled a friend and me to Athens, Ga., on a vague search for Mangum and his compadres in the Elephant 6 Recording Company; the music that encouraged me to start futzing with my roommate's four-track, recording wineglasses and the kitchen sink; the music that became the high-stakes mirror for a two-year nonrelationship (and inspiration for a creative collaboration).
It was the latter that seemed to come to a conclusion this summer, as I heard "Castaways and Cutouts," the Decemberists' 2002 debut, for the first time, and I got involved with somebody else. "My name is Leslie Ann Levine," frontman Colin Meloy sang as the album opened. "My mother birthed me down a dry ravine." It was the voice, Mangum's voice, pinched and assured, and it was like suddenly remembering a dream. Instinctively, I searched for the same sort of cosmic tendrils that lashed me to "Aeroplane" and the girl. They seemed a necessary component of a meaningful relationship.
