King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1

So here's the deal... 10 years ago, Feb. 1998, Neutral Milk Hotel's "In an Aeroplane over the Sea" came out. I was a sophomore in high school. HOWEVER, I did not know that this album even existed until like three or four years ago. So to say I was late on getting on train would be wrong... I missed the train. Here's the deal... I'm going to blog about pretty much every song on this album over the next few days. Why? Because it's probably the best album of the last ten years... maybe the last 15 years depending on how you feel about Nirvana and Pearl Jam and others. I'm not sure how this will turn out... but hopefully it will be enjoyable.

Since I've gotten this here MacBook that I'm typing away on, I have listened to this song in more than any other song over the last 19 months. (Though, I think I've listened to "Fake Palindromes" more since I have two copies of that song on iTunes, but whatevers).

Anyway, since I brought it up already, might as well get it out of the way - I did not know this album even existed until 2005. But it took me five seconds to realize how important and great this album is. King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1, kicks everything off and despite what Pitchfork says, "the achingly gorgeous nostalgia" the song can only be heard to fully understand how gorgeous the song is. It's chilling really, the tail of two adults who are pathetic... yet there are also these two lovers. And this is surrounded by this amazingly simple and great acoustic guitar, eventually an accordion is thrown in there. This song is beautiful.

But back to me not owning this record for forever... I can't tell you why. For some reason I owned Echo & the Bunnymen's "What are You Going to do with Your Life" and knew Wilco existed and liked them. But Neutral Milk Hotel slipped by me.

Ten years on, nearly to the day, Vampire Weekend released their self-titled debut... and they didn't slip through the cracks with me. The, like Neutral Milk Hotel's, is amazing. I'll say it now, it's one of the five most important records to come out in the last ten years. The Strokes are up there and maybe the new Radiohead. Then again, maybe nothing touches Vampire Weekend - maybe their record is the best since "In an Aeroplane Over the Sea" came out.

I love how symmetrical life can be - it really is beautiful.


Not sure about the video here, but it's the song.