About 14 years ago, I was sitting in a high school classroom with my friend Sebastian. He told me he had an album he wanted me to hear and let me hear a bit of it. I knew in that moment I was listening to something very special, but even all these years later, this album still resonates deeply with me. In The Aeroplane Over the Sea is a special kind of record that speaks directly to my soul in some strange secret language that no other songs ever dare speak. This album has so much emotional depth; obviously, it focuses heavily on Anne Frank and the Holocaust, but it’s not all dirges or anything. The music is keen to reflect on the joy of life just as much as it is the sorrow of death. The scope of the instrumentation is huge for an album that is at its core some songs written with an acoustic guitar. It’s a very dynamic LP; some of the tracks are huge and bombastic, but it’s also not afraid to get extremely intimate and sparse. Of course, it’s a record that plays a huge effect in my personal life. I gladly accepted a CD copy from my best friend for Christmas of 2011. Some years later, I was lucky enough to sing the title track up on stage with my best friends at a packed open mic. An audio recording of this actually does exist, but I’ll spare you all from hearing that right now.

Anyways, last night I listened to the album in full for the first time in some months, and I was just thinking about how important it is that as many people hear this album as possible.