During the recording of 1996's On Avery Island, Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum was living in a walk-in closet in a friend's apartment. Prior to that, he'd been changing addresses constantly. Now he's based in Athens, Georgia, and working with a set line-up. As Mangum explains, this newfound stability, among other things, has had a strong affect on NMH's latest, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (Merge).
AP: How has your new location affected your songwriting?
When I wrote [Aeroplane], I finally had a room of my own to work in at all hours of the day with the door shut. I'd sit there listening to shortwave radio and my records - Captain Beefheart, this French composer Pierre Henry, Bulgarian music, Hungarian gypsy music. The stability let me go deeper into my head and let the subconscious take over. There's such an obsessive nature to these new songs - a few of them really freaked me out. It took my housemates to say, "That's not too strange."
AP: Aeroplane seems like an On Avery Island sequel: characters return; similar sexual and spiritual themes abound. You even reworked an early single, "Up and Over."
I don't see any difference between a song I wrote in 1989 and a song I'll write in the next century. The songs are like a little filmstrip in my head, all cut up. There's a story in there, and I'm trying to figure out what it is. Sorry. I'm trying to describe the inner workings of my brain, and it's not easy.
AP: Musically, Aeroplane seems more direct. There's more acoustic guitar, fewer production tricks . . .
The lyrical content was more important this time than messing with things sonically, even though I still felt strongly about not making a straight record. About half of the record is based on The Diary of Anne Frank, about realizing how horrible the world can be. You want to save someone, but there are certain restraints - like time and space. I used to have recurring dreams of time travel. There was a lot of music in my dreams. I can't help but think the dreams have something to do with my songs. This record has more to do with my subconscious than the workings of everyday life. I don't necessarily think everyday life is reality, anyway. But there's only so much you can say about that without sounding like a cheeseball.