Originally I was going to post "King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. 1" and wrote this opening paragraph about it:

If hearing this song doesn't immediately make you want to do one of two things, being 1) find this album and then listen to the rest of it, or 2) find your copy of this album and then listen to it again sometime today, then get off my website and never come back.

But then I realized that hearing King of Carrot Flowers doesn't so much make me want to listen to the whole album, so then 1) I am breaking my own made up rule about my own website, and 2) I'm not really staying true to my goal then, because I'm not posting a song that makes me want to listen to more of the artist if this was my first time. Holland, 1945 is the Neutral Milk Hotel song that could get me into them if I wasn't already, if I heard it at this point in time.

The people on SongMeanings say this song is all about Anne Frank and the Jews. I don't know anything about that, but their arguments are convincing, so let's believe them and move on. (Sorry, Jews!)

I was at a 50th birthday party for the father of a friend of mine, and this scenester kid picked up an acoustic guitar randomly and played through a literally perfect rendition of Two-Headed Boy (also off this album, also beautiful and awesome) with a voice like a younger Jeff Magnum, and it was stupendous. It almost made me cry, it was so good.

(There was some kid there trying to talk shit near me during the guy's performance of it, saying, "Why's he sound like shit, this guy can't sing!" and I got to be the pretentious indie music fan who says, "Actually he's pulling off this song rather beautifully and this is how the original sounds! So show some respect and shut your fucking mouth.")

Afterward I walked up to the singer and started quizzing him about Neutral Milk Hotel, The Elephant Six Collective, The Olivia Tremor Control, Jeff Magnum, and neo-psychedelia in general. Sadly, he was totally clueless. He looked a little saddened by the fact that he didn't understand anything I was saying and could only offer, "Yeah a friend gave me the album and I like it a lot, but I've never listened to anything else by them. I don't really explore much, I just listen to what people give me."

These last two days can be themed as "People Who Are Supposed To Know Something About Music Disappoint Me At Every Turn".