I know a lot of people who hate this album, but I love it. Jeff Mangum's voice is definately an acquired taste. On first listen it sounds like whiney emo crap with some horns and acoustic ballads, but after a while the nightmarish and phantasmagoric lyrics worm their way into your brain in spite of the eerily "happy" music. Some of the songs here venture onto surreal hallucinatory planes that Syd Barrett only touched upon (the centerpeice, "Oh Comely," is particularly vivid). And yet it's all somehow hopeful and life-affirming. It's a concept album about life, death, rebirth, family life, the Holocaust and Anne Frank, I guess. I'll be damned if I can make heads or tails of it.