Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea Read online

  “We didn’t use fuzztones at all. There are no Big Muffs or distortion pedals or anything like that. I had a few different pieces of equipment at the time. I had a Bellari RP-220 tube mic pre-amp that would distort back on everything. I put the microphone close to Jeff’s guitar. An acoustic guitar has a rattle to it. For me, what’s appealing about acoustic guitar is the way it buzzes. I would position the mic in such a way that it would catch some of that. So right off the acoustic guitar, you’re getting some distortion-like sound—it’s off the strings. Then we put it through the mic pre-amp, and it would be distorted—not terrifically distorted, just a little distorted, so it just sounded overloaded. Then I put it through the mixing board and distorted the mic pre-amp on the console too, then pushed the tape very hard. There were a lot of different sources of distortion, but it was all studio distortion, there was no effect distortion. And also that distortion included horns. Almost all the instruments were sounds that were carried through the air—squeezeboxes, a bagpipe, saws, drums, acoustic guitar. And there was fuzz bass, there was a banjo through the fuzz pedal.

  “Every time I used a microphone, I distorted it. So there was some distortion on almost every single instrument. And microphone distortion is different from line-in distortion—line-in distortion sounds punchy, microphone distortion sounds round and thick—and that’s why the Neutral Milk record has that feeling. Microphone distortion is an artificial device you can use in the studio as a production and engineering choice, to simulate the energetic sound that you’re trying to get. It’s there, the people are playing it—how do you catch it on tape? You do certain artificial things to capture it. One of them is distorting the microphones. It was partially theoretical for me at the time, because I tend to operate a lot on theory, and it was partially just feel. I was just going by what I thought felt right, because I was learning how to engineer. I don’t mean to always focus on things I did, because it was just a small part of it, but it’s the part that I remember the most and that I was closest to. The sound of those things being distorted, and capturing it that way, is something that I developed immediately upon starting to record that record, that sounded like that record to me. The whole time we were recording, there was a certain sound that I was always trying to get, even though I didn’t know how to get it. So that’s the fuzz.”

  If Robert thought he was simply entering into phase two of the creative partnership that had been honed with On Avery Island, he underestimated the passionate connection that the band felt for the songs, and how involved they would be in the studio. For the band, too, working with Robert—on one level an outsider who sought to control and capture what they were doing, on the other a fellow musician who expected, and who Jeff expected, to participate as a member of the band—was a big change from the free-form style of their all-night rehearsals and chaotic live interpretations of the material. Jeremy recalls, “It took a while for these two sort of separate creative identities to merge, and when they did, things really expanded. I don’t think Robert was prepared for the band, and the level of input that we wanted to give in the studio. And we weren’t prepared for Robert’s ideas about our songs—yes, they were really Jeff’s songs, but the rest of us felt very close to them, so close that they became ours as well. Adding Robert completely took them to the next level. And I think he realized that Neutral Milk Hotel with the four of us really worked. He produced the record, but I think he was also a member of the band.”

  Julian says, “The sound of the album was a marriage between Robert’s recording aesthetic and the band’s sound, because the four of us had grown one—a confoundingly distinct and powerful one that we all recognized. We encouraged the fuzzing of microphones to capture the energy of things. Robert’s instincts always ran towards control, separation and the even keel; mine and Jeremy’s towards freedom, energy, white noise and chaos; Jeff’s towards more fuzz! I remember wanting to capture a quality present in the cassette tapes, and in the room when this music was made, that couldn’t be captured in a controlled sonic environment like Robert had created for Avery. And Jeremy and I convinced Robert to let us all play at once on a few occasions, like on ‘The Fool,’ against his better judgment.”

  During the sessions, “The King of Carrot Flowers Pts. Two & Three” again raised eyebrows, Martyn Leaper’s specifically. When he first heard Jeff sing “I love you Jesus Christ,” he didn’t know how to take it. As someone who’d always had problems with organized religion, he was repelled. But as a songwriter, he was stunned by the profound and fearless honesty with which Jeff was expressing his faith. Jeff didn’t seem to give a damn what anyone thought of him, or if he seemed uncool. And it’s this naked honesty, Martyn thinks, that has brought so many people to the record—even folks who aren’t themselves religious are touched by Jeff’s faith and his guts.

  Some songs were recorded live as a band, with overdubs layered over the basic tracks. Surprisingly, “Oh Comely,” at 8:18 the longest song on the album, was recorded in a single take by Jeff by himself. The other musicians clustered around Robert in the control booth and in the tiny adjacent room for what they thought was just a test take as Jeff tried out the mic placement. Robert remembers feeling claustrophobic, with maybe twenty people standing around him. The rooms were laid out so Robert could hear Jeff’s playing through the speakers, but also ambiently through the air. Although he was only supposed to play a verse or two, Jeff powered through the song, stunning his friends with a beautiful, passionate performance no less amazing for the uncontrolled moments when he veers out of tune. At the finish, everyone burst into spontaneous cheers and applause—you can hear someone, possibly Scott Spillane, yell “Holy shit!” at the end of the track if you listen closely. The final version is almost exactly what Jeff played that day, with the addition of horn overdubs and a couple of places where Robert went in and doubled the vocal.

  Vocal doubling was a convention that both Jeff and Robert had long relied on while recording alone, an easy way of making a performance sound rich and layered. When Jeff came to Denver to work on On Avery Island, he’d told Robert, “I don’t want to double my vocals anymore. I just want them to sound like me singing.” This proved a hard habit for Robert to break, and he’d often suggest doubling, only to have Jeff say no. But by the time Aeroplane rolled around, Jeff had relaxed his strict anti-doubling policy, resulting in some striking effects on otherwise spare vocal performances.

  As a producer, Robert feels that he has a particular gift for capturing elusive, unique aspects of performance. “I like to think I have a talent at capturing actual spirits and emotions. I don’t mean like souls, I just mean a spirit, a feeling, off the tape. You can create a certain environment with people you’re recording with and make them feel free. It doesn’t feel like they’re under any pressure, and it feels creative and like you can do anything. If you capture it, without beating it into the ground and doing it over and over again, it, that’s a real thing. You make a real sound that is recognizable to other ears, and seems spontaneous and creative. That spiritedness, like an old jazz recording or an old R&B recording, it’s a real sound.

  “You can attribute it to a lot of factors, like the performance and way it was recorded, but in reality, people recognize cues from other people. We build up our world by our interactions with other people. The point is that there are cues that we get from other humans that sound like what they are doing, and you can capture those sounds on tape. You can capture the sound of creativity and energy, and it’s separate from the performance and the production and the miking and all of these different things. There’s just this youthfulness, this untamed quality that, if you can capture it, resonates with people when they hear it. Like when you hear an old R&B recording from before they were multi-tracking, you’re getting the soulfulness, the musicianship, all these different things that are great about it. But on top of that, there’s this extra quality of rawness and reality. It’s listening in to people’s lives, and when you capture that it resonates for p
eople who hear it. It feels like you’re at a party, or at the circus—you really feel it when you hear it. And that’s what I’m proudest of, that and capturing his vocals.”

  The first time Great Lakes’ Ben Crum met Robert Schneider, he was “surprised to hear him talk about Neutral Milk Hotel as if he was in the band.” But on some very real level, Robert was a band member, and his production and engineering choices had as much to do with the sound of the record as any of the players. Ben muses, “If Jeff and the band had gone into a ‘regular’ studio it never would have sounded anything like that. Robert gave it that sort of cartoon kind of sound, where the instruments are all more colorful than they actually are in real life—warmer, more present.”

  For Julian, a defining quality of making Neutral Milk Hotel music and being in the band was the way the players navigated through the chaos, without seeking to control it. This was very much the case in their lives, out on the road or in whatever nest they found along the way, but even more so when it came time to try to capture the band’s essence in the studio. Julian reflects, “I think I really recognized how important that chaos was, how much of the magic of what was happening radiated through that chaos. In a weird way, I felt that the record was supposed to be chaotic: there needed to be an explosion if there was going to be a record of the thing. Maybe loving that chaos was part of my job—because I know Robert’s job was to try and reel everything in and make it not fall apart. Without each of us being what we were, things would have gone in one direction. If Robert hadn’t have been there, that record would probably have been more like the cassettes—a really passionate, chaotic thing. And with just Robert it might have been more like Avery, with the capturing of things. Also, the way Jeremy played the drums—the sheer volume—and the band’s absolute desire to capture it, affected the approach to recording tremendously.”

  The horn arrangements, which are so distinctive a part of the sonic landscape of the album, were mainly composed by Robert working on the piano or organ. He’d write the parts out to the best of his ability, then confer with trombonist Rick Benjamin, who would ensure that the notation was correct. Only then would the full horn section of Rick and Merisa Bissinger (sax and flugelhorn) come into the studio. These players were Denver locals who Robert continues to call in to work on numerous projects, including all the Apples’ records, the Minders and his solo recordings. The parts Scott Spillane wrote can be recognized by their blaring, boisterous qualities, while Robert’s arrangements are the pretty, sad, melodic parts, some of which Scott played alone, others that used the full horn section.

  When Scott arrived in Denver, Robert sat down at the piano and showed him the parts that he and Jeff had worked out for several of the songs. Scott can read bass clef, but trumpet is written in treble, so he had to take the parts and rewrite them in the bass clef so he could learn them. For the more orchestrated parts, Scott would revive his Queens working method and disappear into the basement for days at a time while the band was recording other things, practicing and working them up until he had something worth coming upstairs and showing to everyone.

  The most horn-driven piece on the album came to Denver fully formed, a Scott Spillane composition. He’d started writing “The Fool” in Austin as a favor for a friend who was writing a short film of that name and needed a soundtrack. He finished it in Grandma’s basement, while bored and messing around with Julian’s accordion one day. Director Joey Foreman was then studying at the University of Austin; he later moved to Athens and did animation and film projections for Olivia Tremor Control performances, plus videos for OTC and the Circulatory System. Scott remembers that the film starred a little boy whose Italian father was always haranguing him and asking “Who’s more foolish—the fool or the fool who follows the fool?” Jim McIntyre recalls that “The Fool” was recorded live to two-track DAT.

  Jeremy Barnes thinks that the best of the horn arrangements came late in the recording process, after both Scott and Robert had presented their own concepts, and worked together to develop charts for the final takes. The combination of Robert’s harmonic sense and Scott’s highly individual playing style produced something remarkable. Jeremy raves, “Scott is basically a one-man horn section. He plays completely from his heart, unlike anyone else I have ever played with.”

  Julian reflects, “Scott’s modesty aside, his horn playing and his parts were and are all his own, and special for all the world. Distinct. Again, the tension of Scott being heartfelt, explosive, and Robert trying to superimpose arrangement and control, made for something nice.”

  It was no small thing to keep so many players fed and modestly comfortable during the month-plus process of getting Aeroplane down on tape. In addition to the core band of Jeff, Jeremy, Julian and Scott, Laura Carter arrived part-way through the sessions to add her zanzithophone* parts and be with Jeff, and there was a constant stream of uncredited musicians who dropped in for an hour or a few days. Most of them crashed on Robert’s living room floor, while Jeff made sure his friends weren’t hungry. They found one magical dish on the local Chinese take-out menu that could somehow serve everyone for about $5, or they would cook up big pots of tofu, rice and BBQ sauce for breakfast, lunch and dinner. One of the bigger expenses was Scott Spillane’s cigarette bill, a provision of his appearance on the album.

  The sessions received a weird blessing on August 11, when a freak hailstorm struck Denver, dropping more than an inch of rain in ten minutes and doing $150,000,000 in property damage. The band members huddled in Martyn and Rebecca’s little kitchen, listening as the sky unleashed a Fortean tribute to the chaos that had been briefly contained.

  And when it was all finished, and the vibrant, changeable songs were snared in digital form on a palm-sized rectangle of DAT tape, Jeff and Jeremy took the bus home to Athens, the sweat of ten years of writing and nearly twice as many months collaboration safely tucked away at their feet. Jeremy thought how glad he was to have been part of it. But the adventure was just beginning. And in beginning, the seeds of its ending were striated, sowed and ready to sprout. No one’s life would ever be the same.

  The songs

  When I first proposed writing about In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, I told the folks at Continuum that I wasn’t interested in subjecting the album to a literal-minded line analysis, sucking all the mystery out of the lyrics and spoiling their effects. Nevertheless, as I spoke with the musicians and their associates, interesting stories, details and connections emerged. I found these added to my enjoyment of the album. If you love Neutral Milk Hotel, then these songs mean something particular to you, and no writer’s ruminations can negate that meaning. Consider the following as a series of cover versions, a layering of possible and partial interpretations that are intended to be transparent; the album remains the primary text, and your reaction to it the secondary one.

  The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. One

  In the Aeroplane Over the Sea begins with an aggressive acoustic strum, punk’s energy filtered through traditional troubadour strings. From the outset, the singer addresses a first person listener, reminding him what he was when young (the titular monarch) and listing horrors and pleasures of that distant time. The royal parents menace each other while singer and subject form a union that seems as holy as it’s carnal. There are hints of incest (who is this singer/lover who observes so intimately, if not a sibling?), of cannibalism (mom sticks the fork into daddy’s shoulder, and presuming he’s a cooked carrot how smoothly it would slide), of Southern religious mania (holy roller rattlesnakes) and of the gypsy Tarot (the tower tumbling through the trees).

  If this is your first experience with Neutral Milk Hotel—and for most, who’ve had the second album recommended to them by an acolyte, it is—what’s immediately clear is that Neutral Milk Hotel is no ordinary pop band, riffing redundantly on stock topics of love, aggression and consumption. There’s more heart, imagination and eclecticism here, and a singing style that fuses holy cantor song with the hysterical expressions of sch
izophrenics compelled to communicate. And yet it’s all so gloriously catchy that even the most startling elements rest comfortably among the whole.

  Robert Schneider says this song has the feeling in it of the woods behind Jeff’s house in Ruston.

  The King of Carrot Flowers Pts. Two & Three

  “Pt. One” ends with a spacey drone that oozes into this track’s initial gutsy cry “I love you Jesus Christ,” which is the spot where aggressively non-Christian listeners have to make a conscious decision to stay with the music. But is the expression one of love for the Savior or for another person, punctuated by the emphatic invocation of J.C.? Jeff repeatedly made it clear that he was singing about Jesus, but the alternative interpretation is there for those who need it. Either way, it feels real and raw and fearless, and soon Jeff’s voice is running away with him, a swirl of disjointed imagery culminating in the loving union of a dead dog and a synthetic flying machine, an idea that obliquely recalls the proto-surrealist writer Lautreamont and his celebrated phantasm of the fortuitous encounter of a sewing machine with an umbrella on a dissection table.