Shawdee Naimy, “Two-Headed Boy” (by Neutral Milk Hotel)

Now here’s a thought. Was Ms. Naimy even born when this album came out? Was she old enough to speak?

In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is really pretty strange - it sits there, on first listen, unquantifiable and a little unimpressive. It was never a hit. It never strikes quickly.

But one more listen and you start to realize (and the key part is it doesn’t matter who you are, this is how it goes) that the hook is in place. You are on the line.

When kids in the 80s covered the Beatles, it was no surprise. The songs were great, sure, but everyone had already heard the Beatles. The band, two decades after their songs had come out, still defined celebrity.

Neutral Milk Hotel is not famous, exactly. But it’s getting harder and harder to find people who haven’t heard of them. We’re all being reeled in.

In two more decades, a middle-aged Shawdee Naimy might well be looking at someone barely two decades old singing this same song and wondering that it was ever considered obscure or undiscovered.