Listening to "The King of Carrot Flowers Pt One" just now, it came to me that In The Aeroplane Over The Sea would be a good record to which to fall in love; I can't justify the feeling, but of course feelings don't need to be justified, least of all those like this one.
If I had discovered and gotten into this album in high school, I probably would've pored over it in the way that I did with OK Computer and other totems of that time, subjecting it to endless musical and lyrical exegesis; today, I'm more inclined to just let it affect me, holding myself open to it just as the record itself seems to endlessly unfurl, both revealing and obscuring more of itself at every turn.
I've referred to it to a couple of people lately as the last album that changed my life (I'm not above a bit of imprecision in the interests of making a point), and I think it's telling that when they, naturally enough, have asked me what it sounds like, I've found myself unable to give any real sense of the thing...to do it justice, it seems more useful to try to give a sense of the record's effect than to focus on the sound of the music itself - although I wonder how useful it is for interested interlocutors to be met with a stream of "it's just so great, and it makes me happy and sad all at once and I find myself singing and humming bits of it at inappropriate moments and I can't explain it but it stirs me", etc, etc...
Anyway, all that being the case, it's probably unsurprising that I don't have anything more to say right now...it makes me dizzy.
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(Bought the album today (gorgeous sleeve design, too) - as good a reason as any to set down a few more of my thoughts and feelings about it. I really believe that cds sound better than mp3s - and if it's just my imagination, well, what difference does that make?)
