We don’t consider it often, but music is really scientific. Although Paul McCartney often composed in his sleep, music is made up of many complicated elements—melody, rhythm, texture, and timbre among other things. It’s just as much about numbers as it is notes. This truth is expressed in the final scene of Amadeus when Mozart is dictating “Requiem” on his deathbed for Antonio Salieri. As you watch Mozart volley his ideas to Salieri and reach a mutual understanding of the piece with him, you acquire a good sense of how music follows certain rules and principles that allow musicians to open the doors to the rooms where their colleagues create music.

But the aspect that makes music special is the human element (yes, that’s from the DOW chemicals commercial). All art is a product of human thought, experiences, and, most importantly, feelings. And without emotion, music is just a computer program that has no function or a math equation that solves no problem. For all the utility of polyphony and poetry, music is nothing if it doesn’t move people.

It is in this realm that Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea succeeds like only the best records do. It has now been 10 years since the album was released, and yet the record still provides as much meaning and power for newcomers as it does for seasoned fans. What is perhaps most miraculous is that it seemingly manages to create a feast out of a few fish, using rudimentary chord patterns that are nonetheless immediately catchy. And amazingly, in this simplicity the imagery is rich. The lyrics paint pictures of eyes abandoned in clouds and fields of buried bodies, and the sounds evoke feelings of isolation, paranoia, and complete awe. The album flows through your mind, as the pulsating rhythms entrance you, the heartfelt vocals wet your eyes, and the occasionally graphic and grotesque images freeze your blood. It becomes far more than music: The bagpipes, horns, and keyboards fill your vacant ears with gorgeous sonorities and create a soundtrack to which you can reflect and think. The album depicts humans struggling, dreaming, tripping out, and moving through their lives hardly thinking about the millions of other men and women that go through their own lives doing the same.

And it soon becomes evident that the music is not that simple at all. It is perfect in composition and as musically interesting as it is emotionally powerful. The timbre of frontman Jeff Mangum’s freewheelin’ voice is strange but immediately gripping, as are the bright melodies Mangum sings. The song tempos and rhythms are unusually diverse, ranging from funeral march pace of “The Fool” to the driving beat of “Holland 1945.” And the instruments in these songs are able to provide the album with both a bright side and a dark side. The songs, at their core, are meant to be simple, but the small things—such as the squeaky violins in “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” and the background clamor of “Communist Daughter—provide enough material for music lovers to ponder for years.

Still, this album has been blasted by older classic rock critics and fans, who say that the chord progressions are too generic, the vocals are too weird, and the songs are too similar in sound. But judgments like those concentrate solely on the math and ignore the moods. Weren’t Dylan’s early songs similar? Weren’t the Beatles’ chord progressions simple? And need I even mention Janis Joplin’s voice?

Like these artists, Mangum sought a deeper purpose than superficial beauty. If a person listens to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea as what Mangum intended it to be—a work of gorgeous, reflective music—without expecting it to be the album to end all albums, he or she will more than likely be moved by the energy of songs like “Two-Headed Boy” and “Ghost” and the dynamic range of Mangum’s voice that is as emotional in “Oh Comely” and as it is sarcastic in “The King of Carrot Flowers Part 2.” This album never was meant to be a self-conscious masterpiece like, say, Pet Sounds or Dark Side of the Moon. It was never intended to become a guiding force in people’s lives. What Mangum intended was to create a collection of observations about the guiding forces in people’s lives, and he did just that: no more, no less. When someone listens to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, they receive an opportunity to explore both themselves and the human condition on Earth, from the condition of people in Iraq to the condition of people in Idaho. And more than anything else, that is the album’s greatest achievement.

So here’s to 10 fantastic years of experiencing In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. And don’t worry about no one recognizing its 20^th anniversary. As long as humans can feel, the raw emotions of this album will live on forever.

- Raj Srinivasan

Image Source: Village Voice

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