Show 6 1/2: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea

Since the show was only an hour today (being truncated due to basketball), I decided to do something that I've been wanting to do for a long time: play Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea in its entirety. This record changed my life when I was in high school and I consider it the monolith of my musical evolution. However, I feel extremely bad when I play single tracks from the album on the radio. Occasionally, I'll play "Holland, 1945," but anything else feels like high treason. It was rather funny, the calls that I received this morning were mostly in regards to my well being (people thought that I had died and the record had continued to play on). Anyway, that was that. After the record finished I had about fifteen minutes to kill and played the last three tracks from Of Montreal's brilliant new record Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? So, in short, this show was about genius sequencing.

Neutral Milk Hotel - King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1 (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - King of Carrot Flowers Pts. 2 & 3 (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - Two-Headed Boy (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - The Fool (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945 (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - Communist Daughter (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - Oh Comely (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - Ghost (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - Untitled (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Neutral Milk Hotel - Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2 (In the Aeroplane Over the Sea)
Of Montreal - Labrynthian Pomp (Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?)
Of Montreal - She's a Rejector (Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?)
Of Montreal - We Were Born the Mutants Again With Leafling (Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?)

Band of the Week
Neutral Milk Hotel

Who else would it be? Honestly, this show was for everyone who has been living under a rock for the past ten years. In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is one of those albums that is almost exclusively discovered by word of mouth and my only goal this morning was to expose this band to as many people as possible. Please, obtain this record as soon as you possibly can. I can't stress that enough. This is a record that can change your life, one where each individual listening is rewarding. It's a record that, after four years, I am still excavating and returning to, and it is still the only record that has ever brought me to tears.