30 day music meme #27

Flaked on posting this yesterday, sorry. 
27. A song that breaks your heart
Neutral Milk Hotel - Two-Headed Boy, Part 2

Watch on YouTube

The song hits hard on its own, but even more so in the context of the album. In The Aeroplane Over The Sea is a grief album, for both personal, historical and existential reasons, one that at first seems to want to raise the dead, give life back to what was lost through the magic of music... and then by track 8 ("Will she remember me 50 years later/I wish I could save her in some sort of time machine"), it becomes obvious to frontman Jeff Mangum that it simply does not work. That he can't work miracles, that all his words and desperate cries won't achieve anything more than reminding him of what was lost and his own inability to do anything about it. And so the album ends on a song that takes 4 minutes to reveal that it's a reprise of the hopeful up-tempo song at the beginning of the album, but this time there's no hope left - just knowing that he'll have to live with this. 
When we break we'll wait for our miracle
God is a place you will wait for the rest of your life
Two headed boy she is all you could need
She will feed you tomatoes and radio wires
And retire to sheets safe and clean
But don't hate her 
When she gets up 
To leave...
We hear him put his guitar down and walk out of the studio. 22 years later, he's still to make another record.