Neutral Milk Hotel In The Aeroplane Over The Sea

It’s sacrilegious how underappreciated this late-90s album is, and will remain, but I can sleep soundly at night wrapped in the knowledge I got it; which is just recognition of how hard this album is to get, lost as it is between the heaviest guitar and searching hymns, all contributing parts to a harrowing story about Anne Frank and World War II that is Marquez’s magical realism mixed with Hemingway’s penchant for war. It’s beautiful and sad but not sentimental because it’s chaotic, raw indie rock. With only a few live releases and little chance of anything new this album is both damned to anonymity and deserving of its cult idolisation.

- JD Rocks, Movement music correspondent.