Illustration by ALEX MOULDS
Tickets for Jeff Mangum at the DuPont Theater in Wilmington, DE on Feb. 5th go on sale tomorrow at noon! Get them HERE. Gone, daddy, gone!
PREVIOUSLY: Today, Jeff Mangum announced a new run of tour dates beginning January 9 in Buffalo, NY and wrapping up February 16 in North Adams, MA. Support will include Tall Firs, Briars of North America and the Music Tapes. A portion of the proceeds for these shows will benefit Children of the Blue Sky, which aims to place orphaned Mongolian children with foster families. A full list of Jeff Mangum tour dates and all up-to-date ticket information can be found at GroundControlTouring.com. MORE
PREVIOUSLY: In 1998, Neutral Milk Hotel released an album of hallucinatory folk-rock called In The Aeroplane Over The Sea that is, it can be said without fear of exaggeration, nothing short of a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Like My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, it is lightning caught in a bottle, one of those rare perfect albums that come along maybe once a decade.
Or once a lifetime.
In 1999, Jeff Mangum — Neutral Milk’s singer, songwriter and primary guitarist — disappeared from public life without explanation, declining all entreaties to perform or discuss the album or record a follow-up. Over the course of his decade-long Salinger-like hermitage, succeeding generations have discovered and come to revere the album, and as such it has become something like The Catcher In The Rye of indie-rock.
Two years ago he emerged from seclusion and started performing again, refusing to offer any explanation for his mysterious disappearance or sudden return. No matter. The ambiguity only seems to heighten the intrigue of his legend. Thursday night’s performance at the Irvine Auditorium, at Penn, sold out in 35 seconds.
Taking the stage dressed in a white cranberry-checked cowboy shirt and a droopy gray Mao cap, the 41-year-old Louisiana-born Mangum waved hello, took a seat, strapped on an acoustic guitar and tore into the slashing, Who-like opening chords of “Two-Headed Boy,” blaring the agony and ecstasy of the lyric with his trademark, heart-tugging yelp like it was 1998 all over again. MORE
Parks and Recreation Neutral Milk Hotel Shout from Mango Nebula on Vimeo.