Exclaim

early 1998

"Neutral Milk Hotel: Endless Possibilities" by Christopher Waters

Scientists believe that elephants can communicate through a broad range of frequency infrasounds, including deep growling that emanates from their stomachs, that travel over distances of several kilometres. Below human hearing thresholds, these rumblings enable elephants to meet or avoid each other as need be.
It's a cool animal fact that proves to be serendipitous with the loosely-related Elephant 6 collective of like-minded bands spread out across the continental United States. The rising stock of Elephant 6 bands the Apples In Stereo, Olivia Tremor Control and Neutral Milk Hotel has made the aggregate one to watch. But Neutral Milk Hotel's leader Jeff Magnum is quick to rebuff the notion that Elephant 6 chose its name because of science's growing elephant communication theories.
"I think that trees communicate too," says the amenable Magnum before giving a more simplistic reason for the moniker: "Elephants are really cool."
In The Aeroplane Over the Sea is Neutral Milk Hotel's second album. It is the first great album of this new year. A follow-up to the noisier and more disjointed On Avery Island, also released on Chapel Hill's Merge label, Aeroplane is an elaborate blend of psychedelic folk music, acoustic guitar-based songs that are fuzzed up with sonic washes and punctuated with odd instrumentation.
It's a cohesive work that is inspired by the inception of a consistent Neutral Milk Hotel band line-up and recordings by outsider artists like Robyn Hitchcock and Robert Wyatt, especially his Rock Bottom album, which Magnum ranks as one of the best ever. "I listened to [Hitchcock's] I Often Dream Of Trains a lot when I was 16 or 17, ten years ago. Then I didn't listen to it for a long time, until a couple of months ago. I can see how that record influenced me in a lot of ways.
"For On Avery Island, I was a more isolated person. I was building a world with sound. All of that noise. I was very isolated in Denver, so that record was me and my vision with [Apples In Stereo's] Robert [Schneider] helping me along and embellishing. So I think of On Avery Island as more of a collaborative effort between me and Robert.
"This new album is more involved with the band that formed after On Avery Island. There are more people, more playing live, more sharing of musical experiences with people. But, basically, I sit in the bathroom and sculpt songs in my head. Then I present them to the band and songs just converge from there."
Since Neutral Milk Hotel's authorship still stems without restriction from Magnum's mind, the band's recording process comes into question. What steps transpire between Magnum's bathroom sculpting and the band's harmonic convergence in the studio?
"As far as the theme to the records goes, I get a story or a film stuck in my head. It sort of runs in my brain and I write a bunch of different parts and different things," he explains. "There's always lots of material laying around. But as far as music and it all becoming cohesive as a song is concerned, it is a very slow process.
"I might write a 12-minute song, and that song might get broken up into different pieces. Because I'll be singing one song and then I'll be singing another song, and then realise that they fit together and get really happy. So I say, 'OK, this is how it's supposed to be.' That song becomes that and other songs take on shapes; some get left by the wayside because different songs taken on different themes. Certain themes work together. I'll struggle with these different parts and songs and take them to the band and ask them what they think works.
"One thing that was different for this album was that we performed a lot of these songs live in front of people before we recorded them, which is really nice. When I write a song, I know what I'm saying and what I'm feeling when it arrives, but I'm not sure if other people will get the same emotional impact. So getting that feedback from an audience helps me gauge what's coming across and re-evaluate what I'm doing and saying.
"Because of that, the record has taken on a really different shape, which is really exciting for me. It's fun to be working with three other guys, and recording with Robert. Every song that we do, we always try to find what magic it holds for us. Try our best to convey beauty as much as we possibly can.
"I love the endless possibilities of music and words and sound. I think that anybody can find those possibilities, and that's exciting as hell. I love music so much."
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