It is very rare in the realm of music that an album overshadows the band who wrote it. Regardless of how monumental the album, whether it be something as classic as "Abbey Road" or revolutionarily impactful, like "OK Computer," any listener is bound to blurt out The Beatles or Radiohead as soon as the respective album enters their ears. After all, it's the artist who carries the prolific credential, and their work is merely an outlet. This is a reasonable assumption for almost any modern musician, except for Neutral Milk Hotel, a band only mentioned for two purposes.

The first of which, possibly more common than the next, is to poke fun at a local hipster's perceived music taste, as the name falls off the tongue so seamlessly amongst names like Arcade Fire and Of Monsters and Men. The second occurrence is used to accompany "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea," an album that still remains an enigma to any music critic. It has now been 20 years since "Aeroplane" swept through the speakers of 1998, perplexing any listener lucky enough to stumble upon it, yet the question still remains: How does some irrelevant indie band randomly put out such an original entity of an album, and simply disappear afterword?

The answer isn't an obvious one, nor will it ever be, but endless examination of "Aeroplane" and, to a lesser extent, Neutral Milk Hotel themselves, will warrant a different interpretation each time, so that's what I'll give you, my interpretation, starting with the band behind the masterpiece. By the time "In the Aeroplane's" release, Neutral Milk Hotel had been a band for nearly a decade, with significantly little to show for it, however.

Among a handful of EP's, they had released one full-length in 1996 called "On Avery Island," an album not deprived of strong tracks, thanks to the distorted pop pulse of "Song Against Sex" and gutting anguish of "April 8th," specifically, but certainly teething and inconsistent. What was important in the release of "On Avery Island" was that the band had nearly defined their sound aesthetic, including a nearly overblown distortion effect, juxtaposed by the sharp, angular tone in which songwriter Jeff Mangum would deliver his abstract lyrics. Introspect, this sound provides a very important foundation on which the band would elaborate on "Aeroplane," but nobody expected such elaboration, not even Mangum himself.

Looking back, there simply were no expectations. It's likely that critics at the time expected the band to fall into the bottomless cesspool of obscure, unimportant lo-fi rock bands, and it may even be likely that the band anticipated this fate, but I've already dedicated an entire introduction to semantics, when the reality is that these expectations and likelihoods stopped mattering on February 10th, 1998. That day, the biggest enigma in the late 90's music scene was unveiled to listeners, forever changing the perspective of anyone in contact with it and, consequentially, influencing the lyrics and themes present in alt-rock music going into the 2000's.

While "Aeroplane" will always be a mystery of a record, and surpasses any attempt at understanding its provocative ambiguity, there are several common threads present in the aural textures and abstract lyricism that remain consistent throughout the record, all stemming from influences Mangum has since disclosed in exclusive interviews. The first of which, intersecting both instrumentation and lyricism, is utter European nature of "Aeroplane," a Mangum took a musical interest in Celtic and Eastern European folk music, prompting other band members to pick up unorthodox instruments like pipes, singing saws, and various horns, and a peculiar fixation on "The Diary of Anne Frank," something Magnum had recently read and found too upsetting to forget. Contrary to these themes, however, an interest in North American folk music and authentic, cigar-box Americana also added to the campy, essence of the record.

Each aspect of Neutral Milk Hotel's suddenly cohesive dynamic is present in "King of Carrot Flowers Pt.1," and the comprehensive "pt. 2 & 3," the first two tracks on the album. Separately, each part of the surreal epic captures a different perspective of colorful, melancholy narrative, while exhibiting a tailored accompaniment in direct contrast to the proceeding part. Part one begins with a comically explicit depiction of domestic violence from the perspective of a child, with comforting vocals perched softly atop a Western-folk acoustic guitar. After the first song fades into a wall of Uilleann Pipe tone clusters, part 2 picks up with a suspended shout of Christian praise, elevating to an orchestral prayer with the help of various horns, and finally erupts into a fuzzy, four-chord rock third section as the lyrics become more extravagant and cheerful. Out of the noise left in "The King of Carrot Flowers'" wake, Mangum shouts out a simple "okay!" confirming that all necessary themes had been established, and the listener may transcend into the bulk of the record.

Looking at "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" as a story, "The King of Carrot Flowers" trilogy serves more as a prelude, setting all necessary context, both thematic and stylistic, so that the listener can sink into the otherworldly realm that is the album. With this in mind, the title track following that permissive "okay!" is where "Aeroplane" truly takes off, as it strips down the robust instrumental established in the first two tracks and becomes a summary of the uncanny emotion that the album gives off. This emotion could be taken two completely different ways, as "Aeroplane" has a sound so authentically fragile that the perception of the listener is the determining factor of its appeal. "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" is like an old porcelain doll: One can look at it and see a joyous, antique work of art or something cracked, frigid and covered with the dust of isolation."Aeroplane" the song portrays this perfectly, as Mangum contemplates an impending death with the help of European vocal runs, acoustic guitar and a wistful breeze of singing saws.

The next chapter, "Two-Headed Boy," finally reaches a point of rawness, something necessary to convey the flamboyance of Mangum's lyrics. The song is comprised of two instruments working in unison, the first being a simple, flourished acoustic chord pattern that reads alone as festive and uplifting, as does Mangum's nasally tinged, driving vocal melody, but the true spectacle of the song is the protagonist in its lyrics. As the title suggests, Mangum dedicates this piece to a mangled, ungodly freak show attraction who reappears throughout the album. The boy, himself, isn't consistent throughout the album, but he embodies a great deal of "Aeroplane's" implied message. This is, of course, a lyrical fixation on morbid curiosity and abstract horror, but also embracing such horrors with a smiling face and open arms. This isn't necessarily the concept of "Aeroplane," as it has no definitive concept, but one of the many sub-themes that give the album authority.

Another prominent sub-theme, the story of Anne Frank and, on a larger scale, World War 2, is first illuminated the album's lead and only single, "Holland, 1945." Prior to reading "The Diary of Anne Frank," Mangum was almost so bold as to write a concept album about a Jewish family during The Holocaust, but ditched this in favor of the more whimsical imagery throughout "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea." "Holland" is the one song, in a fashion similar to "Two-Headed Boy," to embody this theme in its entirety, while also delivering the most profound, colorful lyrics that inhabit "Aeroplane." The song, while cheerful in its chord structure and textures, laments a work who would rather see its inhabitant's heads "filled with flies," while expressing an active intent to change this way of thinking in what is, in a strange way, the most positively moving song on the album.

As "In the Aeroplane" closes in on it's final handful of tracks, the listener loses the sense that the album resembles a story, as the themes established in "Two-Headed Boy" and "Holland, 1945" are sandwiched between more objective numbers, as the grandiose "Fool" and lo-fi, atmospheric "Communist Daughter" offset the audible dynamics and lyrical detail of the more cohesive their more cohesive companions. This is, however, a clever way to keep the record spacey and suspenseful, like a story. It leaves the listener yearning for a more concrete narrative.

That narrative certainly does come, but in the form of the bare, 8-minute long epic, "Oh Comely." Mangum greets the audience again with his feet firmly planted in the ground, hammering out 6 desolate chords and sneering a long lecture on knowing who our enemies are. A stark, ugly hatred lives in "Oh Comely," which is exactly why the droning, simple anti-ballad remains entrancing, as it bleeds through Mangum's vocals while he tries to keep a constant composure. We hear a completely different narrator due to this, one who taunts the listener, deprives himself of breath and throws his voice like a javelin in lines like "Only my enemy. I'll crush him with everything I own."

Countering the firm narrative Mangum had just earned back, "Oh Comely" suddenly changes tempo, becoming a different song entirely, one that replaces words with empty, zombified syllables, some distant horns, and a melody that falls to settles to the ground like ashes of the song's former sturdiness. The next two tracks, "Ghost" and "[Untitled]," send the record flying yet again in a flurry of fantasy, distortion and bagpipes, proving the instrumental innovation of the album to be on the same level of brilliance as the lyrics. It becomes apparent that whatever the listener decides to focus on, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" is bound to take them on an otherworldly journey.

Though the plentiful, bell-and-whistle sounds throughout "Aeroplane" suggest a grand finale, in which, all of these instruments come together send the listener out of a trance with sheer noise, Neutral Milk Hotel opted instead to close on a soft, warm note, similarly to how the album began. The final song on the record is a neighborly, inviting folk ballad, something innocently beautiful, or so it seems. Perhaps the effect of the song is given away by its title, "Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2," but the little mutant steals the spotlight in the final seconds of the song, and the chord progression sobers, and Mangum murmurs the infectious melody of "Two-Headed Boy." The lyrics change abruptly, replacing the tender "brother see, we are one in the same," with "she will feed you tomatoes and radio wire," something much more fitting to consistently end record's shadow of a concept. Then it's over, you can hear Mangum packing up his guitar, and the dullness of reality seeps back in, as if "Aeroplane" was a coma rather than a record.

Chronologically speaking, the silence following "Two-Headed Boy pt. 2" truly is the last remnant of an active Neutral Milk Hotel. "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" is no revolutionary success story, and Mangum and company never transcended to stadiums and magazine covers as any album of this caliber had granted the artist who made it. After a year of touring in support of the album, the band decided that they had nothing else to say, and nothing following "Aeroplane" would ever live up to it, and decided to go on a nearly indefinite hiatus. Aside from a short, anti-climactic reunion and several live appearances, Neutral Milk Hotel become something of the past, fading into irrelevancy just as they had hypothesized.

That fate is only true on surface level, however, as "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" carries a legacy of its own. The band's name may have no weight any longer, but no expiration date can be put on the manner in which the record grips a listener, erasing all sense of reality for its 40-minute duration and cementing its impact for countless years. It has been cited as an essential album by such a wide range of artists, including Brand New, Phish, and The Avett Brothers, and even author Neil Gaiman, proving that its impact transcends any trend, genre, or field of interest. "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" is not a great pillar in rock history, nor is it a credential for a household-name band. "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" is an ethereal, yet strangely human, world of its own.