From Raging Cow to Neutral Milk Hotel...

I’d been listening to a few mp3s of songs by Neutral Milk Hotel for a few weeks now. Yesterday I finally bought the album (Screw you RIAA). I don’t think I own a CD with as many songs about life and death. If I do, they certainly don’t have the upbeat, magical view of our beginnings and endings that this album has. “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”, “Ghost” and “Holland, 1945” in particular stand out.

According to iTunes I’ve listened to “Holland, 1945” 14 times in a row over the past hour or so. I’ve been thinking about the lyrics as they stream by. The words themselves have this wonderful lyrical quality about them. You can tell the rhyme and meter was crafted as carefully as the rhythm and melody of the music. The song opens with The only girl I’ve ever loved was born with roses in her eyes but then they buried her alive one evening 1945 which is nicely echoed in the final stanza with And it’s so sad to see the world agree that they’d rather see their faces filled with flies all when I’d like to keep white roses in their eyes. I get the feeling that he’s singing about how the person is still great and wonderful even in death, no reason to let them rot away in your memory or in the ground. The song even talks about what happens after she dies Now she’s a little boy in Spain playing pianos filled with flames. Her spirit is so strong and bright with so much music to give that the piano ignites into flame. The rest of this short song is filled with equally whimsical and jubilant ideas about what the living and the dead have left to enjoy.

A few other notes about the title and the band: Holland was liberated May 1945 and occupied by hundreds of thousands of Canadians for the summer. A summer that came to be known as The Wild Summer for the number of pregnancies. I was impressed to see that someone wrote stories based on the songs of Neutral Milk Hotel. Listening: Holland, 1945-Neutral Milk Hotel-In The Aeroplane Over The Sea Feeling: jubical