Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is a bombastic, haunting oddity that many have become obsessed with. Most fans never even had a chance to see it live, since a year after its release songwriter Jeff Mangum became a recluse. For one night at The Armory in Somerville, Neutral Uke Hotel became a way for people to experience it live, from start to finish, completely on ukulele. The man behind the project, Shawn Fogel, said one of the main goals was gathering as many rabid fans together in one room as possible and seeing what happened.

The result, thankfully, wasn't a cover band trying to sound like Neutral Milk Hotel, but more of a melodic and captivating interpretation of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea. Fogel and Josh Cohen are part of the New York based Golden Bloom. Joining them were members of Boston's The Motion Sick - Mike Epstein on bass ukulele, and Matt Girard emulating about six different horn parts on trumpet. The arrangements may seem gimmicky at first, but it really emulated the same quirky aesthetic that defines Neutral Milk Hotel.

"I knew the hardest part was going to be playing it and not singing it like I'm trying to sound like Jeff Mangum," Fogel said. Where Mangum goes flat, Fogel actually hits the notes and correctly pronounced words that Mangum has his own unique way of singing. It confirmed that it he is saying 'pretty' instead of 'bratty' on "Oh Comely." The group played the album without a word in between, even adding a distortion pedal for "Holland, 1945."

At the very end, Fogel encouraged the audience to meet each other saying, "You now know you all have at least one thing in common." He planned to have the show be only a one night event, but the response has been so overwhelming that they've booked a small East Coast tour. When asked if he would ever think to invite Jeff Mangum if they made it down to Athens, the group joked, "You'd have to find him first. I'm not sure if he really exists."

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Photographer: Lee Stepien