Track 13: "Holland 1945" by Neutral Milk Hotel

The only girl I've ever loved/
was born with roses in her eyes/
but then they buried her alive/
one evening 1945

I feel like I could do a separate blog entry for just about every song on the hugely awesome "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea" album by Neutral Milk Hotel.

I first heard the record during my senior year of college and initially didn't like it. But it quickly grew on me. It was just so different than most of the stuff I was listening to at the time. It's noisy as hell, sounds very raw, Jeff Mangum's voice is nasally and a little grating, and it just wasn't what I was used to music sounding like. But it's one of those albums that gets better everytime you hear it, until eventually you know every note on the record. The internet is rife with all sorts of information about the deeper meanings and stories behind the album/band/Mangum in general--and some of it is worth looking into. There's an interesting back story to the record and after hearing in its entirety you'll understand why it's probably the best album you've never heard of and why it's on so many "best albums of all time" lists.

Without delving too deep into the album itself--for me it all plays out as sort of a musical play/maybe even a rock opera of sorts. (there's an extensive amount of articles and stuff written about the record all over the internet). There's lots of Anne Frank and World War II references, some incredibly graphic and harsh lyrics to echo that 'war' feeling. There's songs on the album that are gorgeous (the title track and "Communist Daughter" and King of Carrot Flowers pt. 1" especially), a bit scary, some that could nearly bring you to tears and others that rock so much ("Ghost") you feel like you could put your fist through a brick wall. It's chock full of incredible instrumentation, unique sounds

And "Holland 1945" is one of those. The lyrics are incredibly morbid, like the opening line or "And here's where your mother sleeps/
and here is the room where your brothers were born/
indentions in sheets where their bodies once moved but don't move anymore"

The pace of the song and Mangum's delivery/lyrics make it pretty intense to listen to. But I love when the horns come in--it's just so well done. Like I said if you haven't heard this song or album before, it's way different than what you're accustomed to, but it's really an incredible, incredible record--one I'll generally bust out a few times a year and listen to it front to back just to remind myself how awesome it is.

I have a very vivid memory in college of listening to the whole thing with a handful of friends late at night after many cold beers--with us just singing along to the entire album. And more recently, while hanging out with my buddy Scott Haselden, I took over the IPod. I told him there would be no Phish, Dead or Bob Dylan (his holy triumvirate--deservedly so) at least for the 44 minutes or so it would take to listen to this album. And it blew his mind.