this is not pitchfork

Someone requested I review this album. I had heard of it, but never heard it, so I figured what the hell, I could always use some new music. I listened to the title track and the Two-Headed Boy and on the basis of those songs, bought the album.

Back when I was a no-good teenager and used to do things like ingest chemicals that would alter my brain waves, I would spend some of that time just sitting in front of the mirror, with a candle between my reflection and myself. I’d put on some music – mostly Pink Floyd – and then watch the way the flickering of the flame changed my reflection. Someone – I think it was a long ago babysitter – told me that what you see in the mirror when you do this are all the people you were in past lives. So I’d stare and stare and be mesmerized by the appearance of my face melting and my eyes glowing and I’d wonder if maybe I was a skeleton in all my past lives.

Sometimes this experience was exhilarating, sometimes it was downright creepy and sometimes it was otherworldly. But always, it was fascinating.

And that’s exactly how I feel about In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. I don’t know if the music is the drugs, the candle or my reflection or a combination of all three, but this entire album makes me feel like I’m 16 years old and just ate an entire blotter sheet of acid and nothing is what it appears to be.

That’s a good thing.