I Didn't See Neutral Milk Hotel In Jersey City Last Night

Maybe It Was for the Best

So I had anticipated posting a review of last night's Neutral Milk Hotel show in Jersey City here this morning. I was too sick to go.

Maybe it's better that I didn't go. Jeff Mangum emerged from his only sporadically interrupted post-Neutral Milk Hotel hiatus in 2011 to play several solo dates, including some at The Paramount in Asbury Park. I think it was during "Two Headead Boy" when CoolMom turned to me and suggested that I sing along a little more quietly, maybe. I snapped out of my trance, and I did notice that I may have been the loudest person in our little area of the balcony. Out of character for me; but when it comes to the songs on In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, I can't help myself.

Listening to Neutral Milk Hotel can get kind of embarrassing for me. I still can't help getting visibly choked up, my voice cracking, when I sing, "We must pack up every piece / of the life we used to love / just to keep ourselves at least / enough to carry on" from "Holland, 1945." I think of my own girls and my own family.

In The Aeroplane Over The Sea famously contains several references to the story of Anne Frank. It's not just moving, though, because it makes us think of the tragic story of Anne and her family. It documents Mangum's trying to make sense out of a world in which Anne's story was possible. He comes to the conclusion that, in a way, nobody ever really dies. As he said in his notes explaining the "I love you Jesus Christ / Jesus Christ, I love you. Yes I do" opening to "King of Carrot Flowers, Part 2," "Endless on this album is not based on any religion but more in the belief that all things seem to contain a white light in them that I see as eternal."

It takes him a while to get there, though. "King of Carrot Flowers, Part 1" alternates between scenes of young love and domestic strife, but the line "And this is the room one afternoon I knew I could love you" always has me picturing Mangum sitting alone reading The Diary of a Young Girl. On the title track, he sings "There are lights in the clouds / Anna's ghost all around / Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me / soft and sweet." In the bridge, though, he doesn't want to let her go: "Oh how I remember you / How I would push my fingers through / Your mouth to make those muscles move / that made your voice so smooth and sweet."

"Two Headead Boy," with its grotesque images of a two-headed boy floating trapped in a jar and of the horrors of the camps ("And they'll be placing fingers through the notches in your spine"), mentions Mangum's white light and starts to get at the idea that physical death can be a release: "There's no reason to grieve..." "Watching spirals of white softly flow / Over your eyelids and all you did / Will wait until the point when you let go."

This is getting long, so I'm not going to go song by song. One of the most important points on the record, though, is the pairing of "Oh Comely" with "Ghost."

From "Oh Comely:" "And I know they buried her body with others / Her sister and mother and 500 families / And will she remember me 50 years later? / I wished I could save her in some sort of time machine."

From "Ghost:" "And she was born in a bottle rocket, 1929 / With wings that ringed around a socket right between her spine / All drenched in milk and holy water pouring from the sky / I know she will live forever / She won't ever die / She goes / And now she knows she'll never be afraid."

Jeff Mangum admitted to having zero knowledge of world history when he read The Diary of a Young Girl. On some level, it's kind of strange that he'd never known a story that most of us learned by high school. But he made a connection across 50 years with the book's young author. He grew to love her and felt helplessness and frustration over her death. Ultimately, though, she inspired him to produce his masterpiece. She's no longer living in fear or in pain, and her "eternal white light" is still out in the world. "Ghost" again: "Ghost, ghost, I know you were within me / Feel you as you fly."

I'm telling you. It gets me every time, and -- given my weakened and decongestant-addled state yesterday -- I probably would have been a blubbering mess if I saw it live.