Song of the Day (The Chain): Neutral Milk Hotel – In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

Day 12 – a fairly straight forward connection today. Neutral Milk Hotel’s masterpiece In The Aeroplane Over The Sea was released on Merge Records, the label set up by Superchunk to release their, and their friends, music.

The album’s title track is, perhaps, the best known tune by Neutral Milk Hotel. A simple, sweet acoustic Folk song with added brass &, unusually, a musical, singing saw. It’s a song about loss and learning to deal with mortality & the inevitability of things just ending. Sad, sweet & beautiful. Unfortunately, there isn’t an official video, or many good videos of it being played live, so I am just using this audio clip. I’ll add a couple of good performance videos (but with terrible sound quality) at the bottom of this post.

What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all ’round the sun
What a beautiful dream
That could flash on the screen
In a blink of an eye and be gone from me
Soft and sweet
Let me hold it close and keep it here with me

And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see
Love to be
In the arms of all I’m keeping here with me

What a curious life we have found here tonight
There is music that sounds from the street
There are lights in the clouds
Anna’s ghost all around
Hear her voice as it’s rolling and ringing through me
Soft and sweet
How the notes all bend and reach above the trees

Now how I remember you
How I would push my fingers through
Your mouth to make those muscles move
That made your voice so smooth and sweet
But now we keep where we don’t know
All secrets sleep in winter clothes
With one you loved so long ago
Now he don’t even know his name

What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all ’round the sun
And when we meet on a cloud
I’ll be laughing out loud
I’ll be laughing with everyone I see
Can’t believe how strange it is to be anything at all

Keep up to date with the Song of the Day (The Chain) Spotify playlist.