Holland, 1945

Holland, 1945 by Neutral Milk Hotel

"One, two, one, two, three, four..."

And with that one of the greatest rock songs ever written kicks off.

The song, like much of this amazing album is about Anne Frank. On the face of it, writing and making an album about Anne Frank seems a bit... well, weird. I don't totally know why Jeff Mangum decided that Anne Frank would be his subject in this album - I do know that he was reading "Anne Frank: The Diary of A Young Girl" during this time. But still why Anne Frank?

Emotion, love, sadness and Magnum says as much, "...I went into a bookstore and walked to the wall in the back, and there was The Diary of Anne Frank. I'd never given it any thought in my entire life. I spent two days reading it and then completely flipped out... I spent about three days crying, and just was completely flipped-out. While I was reading the book, she was alive to me. I pretty much knew what was going to happen.

"But that's the thing: You love people because you know their story. You have sympathy for people even when they do stupid things because you know where they're coming from, you understand where they're at in their head. And so here I am as deep as you can go in someone's head, in some ways deeper than you can go with even someone you know in the flesh. And then at the end, she gets disposed of like a piece of trash."

And that's what this song is. Anne Frank's sad, tragic, and pointless end. This is true when it comes to any death at the hands of some other human, but genocide hits home in a different manner. People are killed for something they can't control: Who They Are.

I'm not doing this song justice. It just so, real and honest. It comes from the heart. And that is what makes "In an Aeroplane over the Sea" so great. The album is honest, real, and passionate. The band, especially Mangum, pours their heart and soul into this album. As far as this song, I love the music, which sounds so big and moves so quickly. But it's the lyrics, the haunting lyrics, that linger in my mind for hours after I hear the song:

The only girl I've ever loved
Was born with roses in her eyes
But then they buried her alive
One evening 1945
With just her sister at her side...
And it's so sad to see the world agree
That they'd rather see their faces fill with flies
All when I'd want to keep white roses in their eyes