At first, it seems like I should be able to enjoy this album; the opening "Song Against Sex" is a fun, peppy, noisy jaunt, sounding basically like "Holland 1945" but 20% slower, and the mix of lo-fi drums, guitars, horn and Mangum's voice messing with the final phrase of each stanza is pretty delightful. Starting the second track, though, the album mostly becomes white noise to me; when I concentrate very hard, I can pick out individual interesting ideas, but on the whole this album makes my mind drift and wander a great deal, and not in a fun ambient "create images in my mind" sort of way. One lovely exception to the white noise issue is the instrumental "Avery Island/April 1st," which features a horn playing a lovely and mournful tune over a quiet keyboard drone, and which comes and goes in a scant 1:48. Beyond that, though, the album is (mostly) rather pleasant to have in the background, but it's one where I've had to dig hard to try and find specific aspects worth mentioning, and I've basically come up empty (and just to be clear, I listened to this album quite a few times before coming to this conclusion). One track that is not pleasant is the closing "Pree-Sisters Swallowing a Donkey's Eye," a 13:49 drone instrumental full of noisy feedback and various Indonesian instruments, and which spends its last ten minutes focusing on cycling through two unpleasant guitar ideas endlessly. I guess there's an argument to be made that I just have to expand my musical vocabulary or something, but nah, I'm good.

Otherwise, I suppose I could give mild praise in particular to "Someone is Waiting," and "Naomi," but even then it's hard for me to identify why in particular I would pick these as slightly better examples of the band's lo-fi peppy droning, as opposed to the other examples of lo-fi peppy droning that feature on the album. In short, this album strikes me as an excellent example of a band having come up with an interesting sound, but not knowing what the hell to do with it. If you consider Aeroplane one of the absolute greatest artistic creations of the late 20th century, then I suppose you'll want to hear anything that even remotely resembles it, but if your enjoyment of that album is anything less, then you're just fine not bothering with this one.

Pretty much everything on here is better than even the best material on Avery Island, but there are two major highlights that stand out from the rest. One of them is the title track, a glorious emotional display of mournful pep, built around a nice acoustic guitar part and with horns and light touches of musical saw thrown in for good measure. The first time I heard it, I actually completely mistook it for depicting a state of genuine happiness, but subsequent listens helped me realize that this was the kind of happiness one exudes when one is smiling so that they don't cry, and the cross of this emotional ambiguity with the way the music gives a sense of matching its title makes me admire the song quite a bit. The other major highlight, of course, is "Holland 1945," which is everything potentially good about the NMH songwriting approach brought to fruition. The peppy guitars (initially acoustic, then going into electric distortion overdrive), the pounding drums, the way that all the instruments seem to be about 20% louder than they "should" be, and the gloriously memorable and enigmatic lyrics delivered with a fantastic vocal melody, all work together to make this one completely live up to all of the hype given to this album. The final portion of the song, when the overdriven mariachi band aspect is brought to the forefront, is an especially great touch.

The rest of the album doesn't really come close to matching those two highlights, but the songs are generally rather nice, and more importantly they aren't as oppressive in aggregate as so much of the Avery Island material is (this is largely because Mangum makes much greater use of acoustic guitar on this one than the previous one, and the use of acoustic guitar makes the various noisier flourishes significantly more effective than they'd otherwise be). I prefer part one of "The King of Carrot Flowers" (a jaunty acoustic ballad where other members of the ensemble work their way in slowly) to parts two and three (this is the one that starts with "IIIIIII LOOOOOVE YOU JAYZUUUS CHRIIIIIIST" and turns into a rollicking frenzy), but both are fun, and the differences in the various sections help make for a fun start to the album (even accounting for Mangum's vocal eccentricities). "Two-Headed Boy" is an urgent-sounding acoustic rocker full of interesting lyrical imagery, and its gradual slowdown near the end, before going into the Sicilian funeral march of "The Fool," is quite lovely.

After "Holland 1945," things get a little draggy, but it's still a pretty decent collection of songs all things considered. "Communist Daughter" is a slow acoustic ballad (with bits of incongruent feedback peeking in) most famous for the repeated "Semen stains the mountain tops" line, "Ghost" is a peppy acoustic ballad with dramatic overdriven bass plucks providing a good effect, "(untitled)" basically sounds like the band doing its own happy version of "Amazing Grace" before it turns into fun circus music, and the closing "Two-Headed Boy (part two)" is pleasant acoustic balladry that's much less rambling than it might seem on first listen, but the center of the second half is undoubtedly the 8-minute "Oh Comely." Hearing Mangum ramble (with not much consideration for hitting correct notes when he doesn't feel like it) over an acoustic guitar for 8 minutes might be heaven for some and hell for others, and it's not my favorite way to spend 8 minutes (calling back to the early comparison to Another Side of Bob Dylan, this would probably be closer to "Ballad in Plain D" and not, say, "My Back Pages"), but it still manages to be pretty engaging all things considered (it's more interesting than "Ballad in Plain D" by a good margin), and if Mangum doesn't establish himself as a 90s Bob Dylan with this track he at least positions himself so that the comparison wouldn't be a completely ridiculous one.

In short, this album strikes me as ... nice. I can't remotely buy into the idea of this album as some sort of all-time classic, and my feelings on not having a proper successor to it are more akin to a shoulder shrug and "well, that's too bad, I guess" than a "Oh what a tragedy to not have more material from such a clearly great band" reaction. And yet, I can understand treasuring it and having it highly rated as a personal favorite, and I'd honestly be much more likely to roll my eyes at somebody who dismissed it outright than somebody who loved it more than I did. If you've been putting off getting this because it has the stench of an album that's been overhyped by hipsters, I can understand that, but I regard it as worth having by anybody who likes pop music and has reasonably eclectic taste, and I hope you'll give it a couple of listens if you haven't already.