Back in Action

Plagued by anxiety back in 1998, Jeff Mangum, leader of the acclaimed Neutral Milk Hotel, simply stopped making music. So he disbanded his psychedelic folk quartet and soon shrank into obscurity, leaving behind two albums on the Merge Records label that sustained disappointed fans. The LPs acted as both reminders of a lost past and seeds of hope that perhaps someday Mangum would re-emerge. 

Thirteen years later, Mangum was back in action. His autumn 2011 solo set at an All Tomorrow’s Parties music fest in Newbury Park, N.J., snowballed into multiple tours. The singer-songwriter is now enjoying a renaissance due, in part, to a 1990s-oriented music culture. This month Mangum, 42, conducts a mini-tour within New York state that includes a Wednesday, Feb. 13, gig at Ithaca’s State Theatre and a Feb. 14 show at Hamilton College in Clinton.  

Jeff Mangum: Music is his life again.

Mangum’s Neutral Milk Hotel also featured multi-instrumentalists Jeremy Barnes, Julian Koster, and Scott Spillane. The band was part of an Athens, Ga.-based underground musical collective known as the Elephant 6 Recording Company. Mangum, along with Bill Doss and Will Cullen Hart (The Olivia Tremor Control) and Rob Schneider (The Apples in Stereo), founded Elephant 6 around 1991. It was the adolescent artistic fruit of a childhood friendship, as the four musicians had grown up together in Ruston, La.

In 1996 Neutral Milk Hotel released On Avery Island, a whirl of manic melodies, jagged instrumentation and cryptic imagery that met with critical kudos. Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot placed On Avery Island fourth on his “Best of Music” list that year, sandwiched between The Fugees, Tony, Toni, Tone and Wilco. “This sounds like one heck of a psychedelic hallucination,” wrote Kot. 

The 1998 follow-up In the Aeroplane Over the Sea likewise earned Mangum an unprecedented level of personal recognition. Aeroplane contains some of the singer-songwriter’s most personal work. On “King of Carrot Flowers Part 1,” Mangum references his own rough upbringing as the child of quarreling parents: “And your mom would sink until she was no longer speaking/ and dad would dream of all the different ways to die.” 

Anne Frank’s Holocaust account The Diary of a Young Girl also inspired much of the record’s lyrical content. “Holland 1945,” perhaps the band’s most popular track, features the most direct references to Frank. “The only girl I ever loved/ was born with roses in her eyes/ but then they buried her alive/ one evening 1945,” sings Mangum overtop a bluster of triumphant horns and jagged guitars. 

Critical reception was mixed. Some praised Mangum for his unbridled lyrical approach, casting him a Ginsbergian Beat. Others thought the record was simply overwritten. “{Mangum} was one of those 1970s kids touched by Brian Wilson and Lindsey Buckingham,” wrote Rolling Stone critic Ben Ratliff. “Unfortunately, Mangum went straight for the advanced course in aura and texture, skipping the basic training in form and self-editing.” 

After a short tour in support of Aeroplane, Mangum disbanded Neutral Milk Hotel. He would spend the next decade or so dabbling in art, sculpture and sound collages. There were rumors of a transatlantic hot-air balloon trip.    

“I went through a period after Aeroplane when a lot of the basic assumptions I held about reality started crumbling,” said Mangum in a 2002 magazine interview with Pitchfork. “The songs were what I stood for. It was a representation of the platform of my mind that I stood on. And if the platform of the mind is crumbling. . . then the songs go with it.” 

Since his return, Mangum hasn’t shied away from the spotlight. On Oct. 4, 2011, he played a 40-minute set for Occupy Wall Street protesters in Zuccotti Park. The set included “Holland 1945” and “Themselves,” a song originally written and recorded by San Pedro punks The Minutemen, one of Mangum’s key influences. 

“The performance was broadcast on the web, uploaded in stop-motion, ultra-lo-res video that reminded me of the moonwalk footage I saw as a child in 1969 on the black-and-white TV in my Queens basement,” wrote critic Will Hermes. 

Last month Mangum played two concerts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He blew through a set of Neutral Milk Hotel tunes, smiling and gracious; his dark hair peeking out from beneath a faded flap cap. Encircled by a ring of acoustic guitars, Mangum conducted a sing-along and fielded the audience’s near-unhinged enthusiasm with grace. This writer bought a ticket to the Jan. 21 show off Craigslist for triple the price; it was worth every penny.