Jeff Mangum Tickets, Tour Dates and Concerts

Jeff Mangum

Similar artists on tour, bandsintown merch.

jeff mangum tour 2022

Concerts and tour dates

About jeff mangum.

Chaneys live

  • Most popular artists worldwide
  • Trending artists worldwide

Drake live.

  • Tourbox for artists

Search for events or artists

  • Sign up Log in

Show navigation

  • Get the app
  • Moscow concerts
  • Change location
  • Popular Artists
  • Live streams
  • Deutsch PortuguĂȘs
  • Popular artists

Jeff Mangum

  • On tour: no
  • Upcoming 2024 concerts: none

19,387 fans get concert alerts for this artist.

Join Songkick to track Jeff Mangum and get concert alerts when they play near you.

Find your next concert

Join 19,387 fans getting concert alerts for this artist

Tours most with

Past concerts.

Phoenix Theater

McDonald Theatre

Egyptian Theatre

View all past concerts

Jeff Mangum live.

Posters (11)

Jeff Mangum live.

Find out more about Jeff Mangum tour dates & tickets 2024-2025

Want to see Jeff Mangum in concert? Find information on all of Jeff Mangum’s upcoming concerts, tour dates and ticket information for 2024-2025.

Unfortunately there are no concert dates for Jeff Mangum scheduled in 2024.

Songkick is the first to know of new tour announcements and concert information, so if your favorite artists are not currently on tour, join Songkick to track Jeff Mangum and get concert alerts when they play near you, like 19387 other Jeff Mangum fans.

Last concert:

Concerts played in 2024:

Touring history

Most played:

  • New York (NYC) (9)
  • Springfield (5)
  • SF Bay Area (4)
  • San Diego (3)
  • Atlanta (3)

Appears most with:

  • Tall Firs (41)
  • The Music Tapes (18)
  • Briars of North America (6)
  • Olivia Tremor Control (5)
  • The Rapture (4)

Distance travelled:

Similar artists

Mount Eerie live.

  • Most popular charts
  • API information
  • Brand guidelines
  • Community guidelines
  • Terms of use
  • Privacy policy
  • Cookies settings
  • Cookies policy

Get your tour dates seen everywhere.

EMP

  • But we really hope you love us.

jeff mangum tour 2022

dear friends we love you but it's time to say goodbye for the never ending now to announce that spring 2015 will be our  last tour for the foreseeable future and so we extend our deepest gratitude to all the beautiful people who came to see us over the last year.....

No documents found.

we'd also like to give thanks to ms. aurora borealis, father foam horse, and mr. valentich for there collaborative contributions to the "womb rume" message that made its way onto this ear area only a few months ago, but from now on, all ciphers shall be sealed exclusively by the meister milk. thank you.

walkingwallofwords.com is the site of nmh records

Original drawings, shirts, and prints

Thirty minute show by Jeff Updated regularly.

Proceeds go to help the Children of the Blue Sky Foundation and others

Future live shows, etc. announced here

  • Go to cart »

jeff mangum tour 2022

neutral milk hotel collected works vinyl boxset, now available on merge records!

hand written "king of carrot flowers pt 1" lyric card by jeff to benefit friends and family....each person also receives one hand stamped envelope!

walkingwallofwords.com is the site of nmh records

Thirty minute show by Jeff

Proceeds from the signed box set help a Syrian refugee family transition to a new life

Future live shows, etc. announced here

an image, when javascript is unavailable

  • facebook-rs

Jeff Mangum Caps Off Tour With Stunning New York Show

By Simon Vozick-Levinson

Simon Vozick-Levinson

“So, are you guys going to sing?” Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Mangum was a few songs into his October 29th solo performance at midtown Manhattan’s Town Hall, and he’d already asked the crowd once before to sing along. Now he repeated his request and launched into “Ghost,” a typically emotional selection from Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1998 masterpiece In the Aeroplane Over the Sea . “C’mon!” Mangum exhorted mid-tune, and a few more voices joined in. Moments later, before the song’s final, wordless verse: “ Now, fucking sing! “

After “Ghost,” Mangum explained why it was so important for him that we sing along: “It just makes everything so much more human, you know? I mean, I used to do this for my friends . . .” He trailed off and gestured appreciatively out at the crowd, then asked for the house lights to be raised so he could see everyone.

These days, when Mangum just finished headlining a small festival , traveling up and down the East Coast on a brief tour and even making a surprise appearance at Occupy Wall Street (all to rave reviews), it’s funny to think how unlikely all of this would have seemed even a year or two ago. The same ardent fans packed into Town Hall on a snowy Saturday night – the lucky few who scored tickets in the instants before they sold out back in February – had waited nearly a decade for Mangum to start performing in public again after he entered an intensely private phase following In the Aeroplane ‘s cult success. When he reappeared in May 2010 at a benefit for an ailing friend, it was with the explicit caveat that his five-song set there was “not the start of a comeback.” Then it turned out that it was. Few dared to expect it, but Jeff Mangum is back, and the music world is immeasurably richer for it.

He got a standing ovation just after 9 p.m. as he walked on to the Town Hall stage, bare except for four acoustic guitars on stands. Mumbling a brief greeting, Mangum sat and opened immediately with “Two-Headed Boy Pt. Two” – the last song on In the Aeroplane , whose keening melody echoed in fans’ ears all through the hiatus years. It sounded just as powerful now. He stared up at the balcony as he went through the well-remembered verses, wearing a grave, perhaps slightly nervous expression, but allowed himself a quick smile at the applause that followed that first song.

Editor’s picks

The 250 greatest guitarists of all time, the 500 greatest albums of all time, the 50 worst decisions in movie history, every awful thing trump has promised to do in a second term.

Mangum kept smiling as the night continued, a little wider each time, and especially when the audience obeyed his frequent pleas for them to sing along. Squeals of delight went up from the room as they heard the initial chords of nearly every song – highlights from In the Aeroplane and his 1996 debut, On Avery Island , plus a Roky Erickson cover and a fan-favorite B side. These were raw, ragged versions of the familiar tunes, with none of the albums’ ramshackle psychedelic orchestration: just one guy on stage, punching out fast chords on acoustic guitars, tapping his foot and singing out in that singular voice. Suffice to say that Mangum, who recently turned 41, hasn’t lost any of his vocal power in the intervening years. By the time his hour-long set ended with a cathartic “Holland, 1945,” most everyone was joining in.

After a two-song encore with the house lights back up again, Mangum flashed a huge grin and walked off – stopping for a split-second as he left to look back at an entire auditorium that had risen to its feet. The crowd went on cheering for a few minutes more, as if they could will him to return and keep playing for another hour. He didn’t. But after a year in which Mangum has proved that he is every bit the uniquely compelling performer he was in the Nineties, it’s starting to seem wildly, wonderfully reasonable to hope that he’ll be back before long.

Ariana Grande is Gorgeously Exposed on 'Eternal Sunshine'

Akira toriyama, creator of beloved 'dragon ball' franchise, dead at 68, ariana grande releases 'eternal sunshine,' first album in over 3 years, ziggy marley on critics' response to 'one love' biopic: 'they were looking for a different story'.

“Two-Headed Boy Pt. Two” “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” “Song Against Sex” “Gardenhead/Leave Me Alone” “Oh Comely” “I Love the Living You” (Roky Erickson cover) “Ghost” “A Baby for Pree” “Naomi” “The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. One” “The King of Carrot Flowers Pts. Two & Three” “Holland, 1945” (short break) “Two-Headed Boy Pt. One” “Engine”

Related • Video: Jeff Mangum Performs at Occupy Wall Street • Elusive Jeff Mangum Performs to Rapt Crowd at ATP

Sevana Wants to Move Forward With New Single 'Keep Going (Chosen)'

  • 'Power and Purpose'
  • By Ethan Millman

Ariana Grande Releases 'Eternal Sunshine,' First Album in Over 3 Years

  • By TomĂĄs Mier

Ariana Grande is Gorgeously Exposed on 'Eternal Sunshine'

  • ALBUM REVIEW
  • By Brittany Spanos

Cardi B Appears to Tease Next Single, Raps 'Enough is Enough'

Ziggy marley on critics' response to 'one love' biopic: 'they were looking for a different story', most popular, facebook, instagram hit by outage: thousands of users reported problems including getting logged out, rumors surrounding prince william’s relationship with rose hanbury are at an all-time high amid kate middleton’s recovery, tony goldwyn, jane fonda, matthew modine and more sign open letter ahead of oscars to "make nukes history", d.l. hughley says he'll never forgive mo'nique for reigniting rift with his daughter, you might also like, ‘flower moon,’ ‘barbie,’ ‘succession’ among casting society artios award winners, the worst dressed stars in oscars history, this best-selling magnetic rowing machine is $185 off on amazon today, oscars 2024: final predictions in 23 categories, phoenix lands nba all-star game as ishbia’s suns revamp proceeds.

Rolling Stone is a part of Penske Media Corporation. © 2024 Rolling Stone, LLC. All rights reserved.

Verify it's you

Please log in.

PopMatters

Essaying the pop culture that matters since 1999

The Return and Demystification of Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum

Last Thursday night, 500 indie-rock fans packed into Le Poisson Rouge in Manhattan’s Greenwich Village for a marathon seven-hour show, a benefit to raise money for Tall Dwarfs co-founder Chris Knox, who suffered a series of strokes last year. By all accounts, the show was an unqualified success. Tickets sold out within minutes, over $40,000 was raised for Knox’s recovery and fans were treated to a night of outstanding performances from some of indie-rock’s leading lights. Yo La Tengo turned in a set of mesmerizingly atmospheric indie-pop and also played in various configurations behind other musicians, most notably Portastatic’s Mac McCaughan. The Clean played their first Stateside gig since 2007, with Robert Scott and David Kilgour playing solo sets as well. And Sharon Van Etten sang a series of deeply felt, richly melancholic songs with a powerful, mournful voice that at times recalled that of Jeff Mangum.

Speaking of Mangum, there was little doubt as to who the night’s most eagerly anticipated performer was. Though he’s popped up from time to time at friends’ gigs to sing a song or two, the elusive Neutral Milk Hotel frontman hadn’t played a proper show since 2001, when he performed in New Zealand at Knox’s behest. In the intervening years, he has largely avoided the public eye and in his absence, his myth has only grown. Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1998 masterpiece In the Aeroplane Over the Sea is now held in even higher regard than it was upon its release and as it has been discovered by a new generation of fans, tales of Mangum’s commanding performances have become the stuff of legend.

A decade’s worth of anticipation can encourage lofty, even unrealistic, expectations. Yet on Thursday night, Mangum easily sidestepped the mythos that has, in some ways, come to overshadow his music. Far from the eccentric recluse that he has been made out to be, Mangum seemed comfortable, relaxed, even happy, to be back on stage. Strumming a beat-up looking acoustic guitar and sitting about two feet back from a room mic (the only form of amplification used during his set), he rocked back and forth in his chair with eyes squeezed shut, belting out a series of beautiful, haunting songs that filled the room even without traditional amplification.

Though tense at first, the crowd slowly thawed over the course of Mangum’s set and eventually came to treat the singer with familiarity rather than reverence. Much of the credit here is due to the show’s organizer, Ben Goldberg, who worked tirelessly to discourage scalping, banned the use of any and all recording devices and implored fans to curb the urge to document and simply enjoy the performance (“Just soak it in, let the glory of the moment wash over you, and then spend the rest of your lives reminiscing at how great it was that you are alive and were there,” he wrote in an email two days before the show). While nearly all of the audience members heeded Goldberg’s advice, in the days since the performance, a few shaky camera-phone videos have surfaced, none of which manage to capture the communion between performer and audience that held a crowd of 500 in rapt attention for 25 minutes.

Contrary to much of the pre-show speculation, Mangum played a crowd-pleasing, if brief, set, touching on some of the best-loved songs in the Neutral Milk Hotel catalogue. He opened with the eight-minute epic “Oh Comely”, the opening chords of which incited many to cheer loudly, before being hushed by those in the front rows who eyed Mangum anxiously, as if he were a wild animal we had to be careful not to spook. Digging deeper, Mangum next played an extended version of “A Baby For Pree”, which bled into “Where You’ll Find Me Now”, both from Neutral Milk Hotel’s 1996 debut LP. By this point, his booming voice sounded rich and assured, even more developed, perhaps, than on those late ’90s bootlegs. As my friend Dave observed, wherever Mangum has been for the last decade, it’s clear that he’s been singing.

During “Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2”, the spare meditation on mortality and impermanence that closes Aeroplane , a few scattered fans could be heard singing under their breath, either self-consciously or involuntarily. By the time Mangum had launched into the bright, life-affirming “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea”, this smattering of voices had grown into a chorus, one that held Mangum’s voice aloft during the song’s soaring refrain.

Returning to the stage amid deafening applause, Mangum asked naively, “Do you guys know ‘Engine’?” before inviting anyone who knew the words to sing along. “It sounds beautiful, please keep going”, he said midway through the group sing-along, a wide grin breaking out across his face. As he left the stage, he was positively beaming, as were most of the fans in attendance.

In the years since the disbanding of Neutral Milk Hotel, much of the discussion surrounding Mangum has been speculative in nature. Fans the world over want to know why Mangum disappeared and if and when he will return, tour and write and release new material. Yet, for one night, the focus was again placed where it belongs, on the songs themselves. Who Jeff Mangum is or where he’s been didn’t seem quite so important during the performance — what mattered was that for 25 minutes, a few hundred of us were lucky enough to experience Mangum’s songs the way they were meant to be heard. Watching him greet friends and admirers after the performance, it became immaculately clear that Jeff Mangum is more than just a living legend — he’s a man, just like any other. And maybe that isn’t such a bad thing.

Publish with PopMatters

PopMatters Seeks Book Critics and Essayists

PopMatters Seeks Book Critics and Essayists

Call for Papers: All Things Reconsidered – FILM Winter 2023-24

Call for Papers: All Things Reconsidered – FILM Winter 2023-24

Call for Papers: All Things Reconsidered – MUSIC Winter 2023-24

Call for Papers: All Things Reconsidered – MUSIC Winter 2023-24

Submit an Essay, Review, Interview, or List to PopMatters

Submit an Essay, Review, Interview, or List to PopMatters

PopMatters Seeks Music Writers

PopMatters Seeks Music Writers

Jeff Mangum

Jeff Mangum

Popular tracks.

  • Jeff Mangum
  • Neutral Milk Hotel

Jeff Mangum Announces Tour Dates, Curates All Tomorrow’s Parties

by Evan Schlansky February 16, 2011, 2:10 pm 3 Comments

jeff mangum tour 2022

Videos by American Songwriter

Reclusive Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Mangum has signed on to curate the latest installment of the All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival in the UK. Mangum, who will also perform on the bill, has drafted Superchunk, Olivia Tremor Control, Apples In Stereo, Young Marble Giants, Tinariwen, The Magic Band, A Hawk And A Hacksaw and The Raincoats to headline. Previous curators of the Festival include Animal Collective and Jim Jarmusch.

Mangum’s ATP will take place in Butlins, Minehead, and will feature around 40 acts in total. Mangum will be performing a solo acoustic set. Tickets go on sale Friday, February 18, and are available for purchase here .

Don’t live anywhere remotely near Minehead? Don’t give up hope; you don’t have to take an aeroplane over the sea. Mangum has also announced a handful of North American dates in Toronto and on the East Coast.

Check out the tour dates below:

Aug 12 Toronto, ON Trinity St. Paul’s United Church – on sale 2/25

Aug 13 Toronto, ON Trinity St. Paul’s United Church – on sale 2/25

Sept 09 Cambridge, MA TBA

Sept 10 Boston, MA Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory – on sale 2/25

Sept 30 Asbury Park, NJ Paramount Theatre – Sold Out

Oct 03 Asbury Park, NJ Paramount Theatre – Sold Out

Oct 29 New York, NY Town Hall – on sale TBA

jeff mangum tour 2022

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Only members can comment. Become a member . Already a member? Log In .

jeff mangum tour 2022

Felice Brothers Sign To Fat Possum, Announce Tour Dates

© 2024 American Songwriter

jeff mangum tour 2022

  • Newsletters
  • Account Activating this button will toggle the display of additional content Account Sign out

Are We Finally Ready to See Neutral Milk Hotel for What It Really Was?

Twenty-five years after in the aeroplane over the sea , the album’s biggest fans are often those who understand it least..

Last week, new reservations came open at the Neutral Milk Hotel. The legendary and (sort-of) long-defunct 1990s indie band released a (sort-of) new three-and-a-half-hour box set, The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel . It marks the 25 th anniversary of In the Aeroplane Over the Sea , the group’s second and final album. Within a year of its release, singer-songwriter Jeff Mangum withdrew indefinitely and unceremoniously from the music world (sort of).

Recent months have also seen the separate advents of a long-gestating book by Adam Clair and a documentary by C.B. Stockfleth about the Elephant 6 collective. That’s the agglomeration of 1990s indie artists and musicians from which Neutral Milk Hotel sprang, first in small-town Louisiana and, later, at the collective’s base mostly in Athens, Georgia. Associated bands included Olivia Tremor Control and Apples in Stereo, and, later, Of Montreal, among many even-lesser-known assemblies. Like author Kim Cooper’s 2005 Aeroplane entry in the 33⅓ series , the new book and film challenge the image of Mangum as lone visionary. They situate his work in a raucous social circulatory system of collaborative creation .

So, the time seems ripe to ask: After a quarter century, are fans finally ready to listen to Neutral Milk Hotel and Aeroplane as historical artifacts? Or even simply as music, rather than fetishizing (or despising) them as cultural totems?

Sign up for the Slate Culture Newsletter

The best of movies, TV, books, music, and more, delivered to your inbox.

Thanks for signing up! You can manage your newsletter subscriptions at any time.

Fan culture can be terrifying. Everyone should have known that from the famous footage of Beatlemania’s Dionysian frenzy , and countless other mass enthusiasms before and after it. Social media simply offers a wealth of new examples. Fandom can also be an engine of self-invention and social bonding, particularly for people who otherwise have trouble finding spaces where they will be heard. Those teeming, screaming 1960s streets full of Beatles-mad girls have been seen by feminist thinkers as harbingers of both the sexual revolution and women’s liberation . Today’s BTS stans and other K-pop enthusiasts have been known to band together for activist causes , and by their very existence, they push Western pop culture to open its borders to the rest of the planet.

Still, fan adulation harbors a violent ritual structure . It’s not just that “haters” as well as celebrity rivals become designated targets for mob attack. Fan idols themselves are symbolically sacrificed even as they are worshipped. Their privacy, humanity, and multidimensionality are ripped away to satisfy the needs of their congregants.

It’s at least partly out of a distaste for all that mass messiness that many people have turned to so-called underground or “ indie ” culture. But it’s deluded to imagine we’ve then escaped cleanly from the pernicious side of fandom. Tribalism easily mutates into snobbery, subgenre competition, and obscurer-than-thou one-upping. And as for that parasitic idolatry, Neutral Milk Hotel can tell you all about it.

Aeroplane was warmly but calmly received by the music press on arrival in 1998. But the mid-2000s saw the album’s poetically febrile, raggle-taggle folk-rock swaddled in layer after layer of legend and sentiment, in no small part due to the buzz around Mangum’s reputation as a hermit. Slate itself wasn’t immune: In 2008 we described Mangum as “ the Salinger of indie rock .” Aeroplane rocketed up many retrospective best-of-the-’90s lists, becoming particularly a mascot for Pitchfork’s pre–CondĂ© Nast heyday: The site compared it with The Waste Land and claimed that Mangum’s art “short-circuits all conventional modes of expression.” Bands such as Bright Eyes, early Arcade Fire, and many so-called freak folk artists drew on NMH’s oneiric antiquarian yarn spinning, its “Salvation Army Band gone awry” arrangements, and Mangum’s vocal yelps and yawps.

In the process, the album became a millennial identity marker, such that sitcom Parks and Recreation used it in 2011 to affirm the disaffected-hipster character of Aubrey Plaza’s April Ludgate. Not long after, on the album’s 15 th anniversary, someone wrote an appreciation of Aeroplane in the Ludgate persona , which unfortunately reads less like satire than a dead-on impression of online NMH fan discourse:

[ Aeroplane is] not made up of “songs.” It’s a bunch of weird, like, musical inspirations that flew down from outer space and lodged in Jeff Mangum’s skull and then he recorded them because if he hadn’t, they would’ve rattled around his brain forever and driven him insane. Which is way better than “songs.” After you listen to In the Aeroplane Over the Sea , you are never the same. 
 And you will look around, and all the stupid people who have never heard it and had their lives changed forever will seem like primitive cavemen who don’t understand anything.

Meanwhile, though, Mangum was doing something a Salinger of indie rock is not supposed to do: coming back, in his own, partial and controlled way. This is the source of all the “sort ofs” in my opening paragraph. Mangum began making unannounced live and on-record appearances with Elephant 6 comrades in the later 2000s. In 2011 he began playing multiple solo shows. (I saw one with a nervously hushed crowd in a church in Toronto.) Then, from 2013 to 2015, he fully got the band back together. Neutral Milk Hotel played more than 160 shows, in 25 different countries and in all but nine U.S. states.

The new box set is also only a more widely available version (with digital sales and streaming) of a smaller, vinyl-only edition Mangum assembled for fans back then. It included an EP called Ferris Wheel on Fire that was recorded in 2010, featuring new acoustic studio versions of some of his best unreleased 1990s songs. Mangum still declined to do interviews, and there was only one song performed or released publicly that was composed post- Aeroplane (“Little Birds,” a song partly inspired by the gay-bashing murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998). But hundreds of live appearances before crowds of thousands is not exactly the behavior of a recluse.

Mangum has acknowledged more than once (onstage and in his one major interview, conducted by a friend and published in Pitchfork in 2002 ) that his initial dropping out coincided with a nervous breakdown. Outside of that period, though, he’s generally been reported to be living a contented and healthy private life. There are more choices than rock star or hermit.

One would think fans too young to have seen NMH’s extensive and anarchic club tours in the late 1990s would have been overjoyed to finally be given that chance, and in larger, more comfortable venues. Most were, but there was also a streak of bizarre unease that was captured in a piece by a writer named David Rice in Salon , who greeted Mangum’s return as nigh on an existential crisis.

Whoever or whatever authored the album feels as remote in time and space as the Big Bang 
 The fundamental mystery of Jeff Mangum himself 
 has never been separate from my identification with and custodianship of his artifact. Over the years, I’ve conjured him as both an ever-present astral guide and a total nonentity, some archaic force that was never a real person.

You see my point about the Ludgate parody. After he did attend an NMH show in Brooklyn, Rice added, “I left feeling lightened, like part of my personality was gone, and I wondered how much was left.”

Such reactions are of a piece with the kind of starry-eyed boundary transgressions Mangum coped with from fans circa 1998. People would travel great distances, bearing handmade gifts, and buttonhole him at length on the mystic portents of his lyrics in their lives. Phoebe Bridgers has called such fans punishers , and Mangum’s friends have often said that this punishment threw him way off balance.

The most notorious case of such misplaced attention came in 2003, when a writer in the Atlanta alternative weekly Creative Loafing published an article called “ Have You Seen Jeff Mangum? ” He frames the piece partially in relationship to his own brother’s suicide. After that, Aeroplane —which revolves around multiple themes that include Mangum’s urge to save or reclaim the spirit of Anne Frank in the face of an uncaring world—helped the writer find “mythological nourishment and a nudge toward hope that some piece of life doesn’t perish with the body.” Art can and should provide that kind of solace in dark times.

But then the writer continues: “So, of course, the one album wasn’t enough.” Deploying his reportorial skills, the writer begins circling Mangum like a shark, attempting to force him to the surface. He interviews other band members and friends and, at his most extreme, tracks down Mangum’s retired-professor dad in Louisiana, to grill him about Aeroplane ’s lyrical allusions to violent conflict in the childhood home. At that provocation, Mangum at last emails the writer, bidding him to stop. The writer persists, until Mangum finally comes back begging: “Please,” the singer writes, “I’m not an idea. I am a person, who obviously wants to be left alone. 
 Since it’s my life and my story, I think I should have a little say as to when it’s told.” The writer’s response? “He’s wrong, of course.”

Not that I think artists should have veto rights over all public accounts and discussions of their lives and work. But that cry—“I’m not an idea. I am a person”—sums up the pathology and objectification to which fan idolatry is prone. Like many fans, the writer is unshakable in his conviction that the person who’s given him so much owes him more, either another album, or a full, self-disclosing explanation for why not.

Such NMH fan obsessiveness logically produces non-fan backlash, whether out of mere bewilderment and annoyance, or in posturing for cool points. Search “Neutral Milk Hotel sucks,” and you’ll find plenty of it. As the cycles of resentment and backlashes-to-the-backlash have sanded off the edges of the curve, alongside the satiating effect of the tours, Aeroplane has cruised gently down to a lower and more stable stratum in critics’ lists and fan polls.

I remain astonished and bemused by the whole two-decade arc. As a listener and writer roughly Mangum’s age, I’ve always heard Neutral Milk Hotel’s music as a product of its time and influences. Aeroplane is nothing more or less than a highly accomplished work within a category, not a sui generis miracle.

I don’t mean just the other Elephant 6 bands’ music here, but a couple of decades’ worth of preceding artists, from the “twee” C-86 bands of the U.K. in the 1980s to the “lo-fi” American cassette-makers of the 1990s (Mangum was a big Daniel Johnston fan), and in particular the groups on the Flying Nun label out of New Zealand (the subject of another recent book ). Listen to 1981’s “ Nothing’s Going to Happen ” by the Tall Dwarfs, for example, and you’ll lose any illusion that Mangum’s style fell inexplicably from outer space. That song even includes the phrase “endless, endless,” the line from the Aeroplane liner notes that Clair uses as the title of his Elephant 6 book. It’s no coincidence that the only two full shows Mangum played during his decade-plus live hiatus were first a 2001 New Zealand club date alongside the Tall Dwarfs’ Chris Knox, and then a 2010 New York benefit after Knox suffered a stroke.

Some millennial fans may know a few of these references, but they’ve most often traced back to them after becoming converts. They didn’t hear Aeroplane in those frameworks to start with.

Some of the mythologizing is also due to when Aeroplane came out. It was the year before Napster launched in 1999. The cusp of the moment when the internet would transform both the music industry and fandom forever. In keeping with its throwback imagery and preoccupations, Aeroplane instantly became one of the last relics of a vanishing beforetime.

Mangum’s withdrawal, too, seems to me rooted in an underground aesthetic and independent ethos that would in many ways be rendered defunct by that imminent economic and cultural upheaval. The “alternative” boom and bust defined 1990s rock: Musicians saw their heroes’ and friends’ lives and careers sabotaged by false promises and exploitative music label deals. There were plenty of psychological casualties of that success mirage, with Kurt Cobain only the most famous. (I also think of Elliott Smith, whom Mangum sounds a lot like on his quieter early four-track recordings.) Many of that period’s acclaimed songwriters professed to be allergic to the concept of fame. Mangum just meant it. As he sings on “Ferris Wheel on Fire”: “Well, now first of all/ We became what we always had feared.” Artists, if you either have to quit or die, please just quit.

When I’m tempted to be generationally smug about the delirium of 21 st -century NMH fans, though, it’s quashed after I consider some idols the Elephant 6 crowd and I had in common growing up: Brian Wilson, Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, Karen Dalton, Sly Stone, Arthur Lee, Alex Chilton, Peter Laughner, Skip Spence, father-son team Tim and Jeff Buckley 
 Allow us to corner you in our rec rooms. We idealized the supposed holy fools, lost geniuses, and outsider artists too pure to function in a fallen world.

As an adult, I contemplate how their friends and peers might regard our romanticization of their comrades who had breakdowns, overdosed, or killed themselves. Too often these artists, just as Mangum put it, became ideas, not people. Tragic events become accessories to our personalities and, at worst, parts of our entertainment. Suicides are not symbolic martyrdoms for strangers’ benefit. If you’ve lost anyone that way, you know how utterly, annihilatingly devoid of romance it is.

In 2023, dethroning the myth of the singular genius and destigmatizing mental illness have both become more mainstream concerns. Fresh cohorts of young fans may find ways not to stumble back into those well-worn grooves. Probably not, but maybe. I’m currently working on a book centered around David Berman, the poet and singer of the Silver Jews and Purple Mountains, a contemporary of Mangum’s and mine, who died by suicide in 2019. That Creative Loafing writer is always looming over my shoulder.

So I’ll decline to speculate whether the reissued box set is any kind of signal that Mangum might be considering some kind of return, whether more touring or new recordings. What I can say is that, listening through the catalog, I can see why continuing Neutral Milk Hotel as such might have come to seem an unsustainable pursuit. The vision realized on Aeroplane is, on every level, from lyrics to bristling and overdriven sonics, about the precariousness of youth and innocence, and its inevitable (though perhaps not total) extinguishing by cold reality. It’s a dizzyingly potent rendition of that theme, as psychosexual subconscious subject matter keeps bubbling up to twist and corrode the guy wires of naivetĂ©. Nevertheless, that eternal-childhood motif can be self-limiting, as many subsequent indie romancers of anti-maturity would prove.

Mangum developed that work throughout his 20s, alone and with friends, and safeguarded his wide-eyed dreaminess much longer than most people. Aside from a handful of standout tracks, most of the earlier material, including first album On Avery Island , is spotty and embryonic. (Sorry, contrarians.) But after Aeroplane , I wonder if that road had dead-ended. “At some point, my rational mind started creeping in,” Mangum said in that solitary 2002 Pitchfork interview, “and it would not shut up. I finally had to address it and confront it.”

For a man in his early 50s, I doubt returning to the NMH mode could be rewarding. That doesn’t mean Mangum couldn’t find another, “late” voice. But it is easy to imagine the inhibiting effect of expectations there, noticing how mightily he and his companions strove to satisfy fans with faithful renditions of the catalog between 2013 and 2015.

After reading the Elephant 6 book and particularly watching the documentary, which bursts with personalities and candy-colored imagery, it’s that community above all that seems enviable in Mangum’s story (despite the pains and losses that later life has dealt the collective). Fame and wealth be damned, and his personal output or lack thereof be damned too: An immersion in the Elephant 6 universe could inspire anyone to refresh the relation between their social and creative lives. May their tribe increase and thrive. ( The film is still touring festivals and hopefully will find wider distribution. )

I was also reminded this week of a tale about how artists might disrupt and reappropriate fan objectification, which just happens to center on NMH itself. The song “Naomi” from On Avery Island is about Naomi Yang, of the band Galaxie 500 and the duo Damon & Naomi. Mangum had never met her, but he sings in its unnervingly stalkerish opening lines, “Your prettiness is seeping through/ Out from the dress I took from you.” At the Terrastock festival in 1997 or 1998, NMH singing-saw player Julian Koster (lately known for his storytelling podcast The Orbiting Human Circus ) gave Yang the record and tipped her off to the connection.

The Collected Works of Neutral Milk Hotel

By Neutral Milk Hotel

Slate receives a commission when you purchase items using the links on this page. Thank you for your support.

“The lyrics seemed sweet but disquieting—a fan letter with a dark edge,” Yang later wrote. Years later, she “thought about taking back ownership of a fan’s infatuation,” and with permission, made her own video for Mangum’s song , in which she lip-synced it, thereby “inhabiting the very lyrics that had been written about me.” The clip also includes shots of some personal possessions and stage outfits, as well as one of The Diary of Anne Frank , “an object that references Jeff Mangum’s own fan idolatry.” Yang recently reissued the video, to coincide with the wide-release version of the box set, though she notes that, in the interim, “I have come to know all the band members as especially lovely people, and I am no longer at all unsettled by the song.”

The narrative of Mangum’s partial vanishing act can serve as a parable too—one for an era of profligate artist presence and fan excesses on social media. Art benefits from a modicum of mystique, by the concealment of the mirrors by which the magic is worked. Think of the year-after-year refusal of Frank Ocean to sate his own fans’ musical thirst, for instance, or of the U.K. collective Sault’s quiet determination to defend much of its membership’s anonymity. Even as mass-market and arguably conventional a star as Rihanna is aware of how keeping up an air of diffidence enhances her charisma. Through his extended silences, Mangum has led many of the curious to listen with a heightened closeness. The longer the hotel preserves its strict neutrality, the more the guests might grasp that they can’t get the milk for free.

comscore beacon

  • Consequence

Jeff Mangum

Upcoming jeff mangum festivals appearances, upcoming jeff mangum concerts near me.

Neutral Milk Hotel Collected Works box set 2023 Merge Jeff Mangum In the aeroplane over the sea on avery island little birds single vinyl record LP

Neutral Milk Hotel Announce New Box Set, Share Unreleased Single "Little Birds": Stream

The expansive vinyl compilation arrives on February 24th.

January 10, 2023

Jeff Mangum and Bernie Sanders, photo via Getty

Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum Endorses Bernie Sanders

Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum has made a rare public statement to express his support for Bernie Sanders.

March 2, 2020

Jeff Mangum of Neutral Milk Hotel, photo by Chris McKay/Getty Images

Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum makes rare public appearance at NYC Climate Strike

Mangum attended the protest event with his wife Astra Taylor.

September 21, 2019

jeff mangum tour 2022

Neutral Milk Hotel plays a Halloween house show in newly surfaced video from 1997-- watch

Featuring the first full-band performances of songs from In the Aeroplane Over the Sea.

November 2, 2016

jeff mangum tour 2022

Neutral Milk Hotel extend reunion tour

The band will be busy in October.

May 7, 2013

We'll Wait For Our Miracles: Neutral Milk Hotel's Shifting Mythology

How can a NMH tour ever be as good as wanting a NMH tour?

May 1, 2013

jeff mangum tour 2022

Jeff Mangum rolls out more tour dates

Another cartridge of dates for this Mangum.

January 18, 2013

jeff mangum tour 2022

Future Music Headlines

Straight to your doorstep — sans any plutonium.

November 16, 2012

jeff mangum tour 2022

Watch Jeff Mangum and Fugazi's Guy Picciotto perform together

'90s indie heroes cover Tall Dwarfs' "Sign the Dotted Line".

jeff mangum tour 2022

  • Album Streams
  • Upcoming Releases
  • Film Trailers
  • TV Trailers
  • Pop Culture
  • Album Reviews
  • Concert Reviews
  • Festival Coverage
  • Film Reviews
  • Cover Stories
  • Hometowns of Consequence
  • Song of the Week
  • Album of the Month
  • Behind the Boards
  • Dustin ‘Em Off
  • Top Album of 2022
  • Top Songs of 2022
  • Top Films of 2022
  • Track by Track
  • Top 100 Songs Ever
  • Crate Digging
  • Top Albums of 2022
  • Top TV Shows of 2022
  • Top Albums of All Time
  • Festival News
  • Festival Outlook
  • How to Get Tickets
  • Photo Galleries
  • Consequence Daily
  • Kyle Meredith
  • Stanning BTS
  • The Story Behind the Song
  • The What Podcast
  • The Spark Parade
  • Going There with Dr. Mike
  • Consequence Uncut
  • Behind the Boys Club
  • Two for the Road
  • 90 Seconds or Less
  • Battle of the Badmate
  • Video Essays
  • News Roundup
  • First Time I Heard
  • Beyond the Boys Club
  • Mining Metal

Theme Weeks

  • Industrial Week
  • Marvel Week
  • Disney Week
  • Foo Fighters Week

Follow Consequence

  • The Range Planet
  • Work-in-Progress Threads
  • Jeff Mangum
  • Feedback/Contact
  • Part-Time Singers
  • Singing Polls
  • Weekly Album Book Club
  • Vocal Survivor
  • Musicians Subforum
  • Musical Polls
  • Musical Users

Jeff Mangum (6,466 views)

  • Previous Thread
  • Next Thread
  • Please make a selection first

Bookmark

  • « Prev
  • Next »

jeff mangum tour 2022

IMAGES

  1. Jeff Mangum Extends Tour

    jeff mangum tour 2022

  2. Jeff Mangum

    jeff mangum tour 2022

  3. Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum Extends Solo Tour

    jeff mangum tour 2022

  4. Jeff Mangum Concerts & Live Tour Dates: 2024-2025 Tickets

    jeff mangum tour 2022

  5. Jeff Mangum Plays Intimate Show, Tells Audience They’ll Never Hear His

    jeff mangum tour 2022

  6. Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum tours again after 14 years

    jeff mangum tour 2022

VIDEO

  1. Jeff Mangum

  2. Jeff Mangum

  3. Jeff Mangum live at Occupy Wall Street, Liberty Park, NYC

  4. The Olivia Tremor Control do "I Have Been Floated"

  5. Jeff Mangum

  6. Mangum vs. Walters Boys Basketball 2/24

COMMENTS

  1. Jeff Mangum Concerts & Live Tour Dates: 2024-2025 Tickets

    Jeff Mangum was the founder and driving force behind the band Neutral Milk Hotel and one of the cofounders of the Elephant 6 Collective. Rob Schneider (of The Apples in Stereo), Will Cullen Hart, Bill Doss (formerly of The Olivia Tremor Control and now comprising Circulatory System and The Sunshine Fix, respectively) and Mangum all attended the same high school in Ruston, Louisiana in the late ...

  2. Jeff Mangum Tickets, 2024 Concert Tour Dates

    Jeff Mangum is an artist that means a lot to me personally. I didn't think I was ever going to have a chance to see him play live, so this concert was a pretty unforgettable experience. Buy Jeff Mangum tickets from the official Ticketmaster.com site. Find Jeff Mangum tour schedule, concert details, reviews and photos.

  3. Jeff Mangum Tour Announcements 2023 & 2024, Notifications ...

    Unfortunately there are no concert dates for Jeff Mangum scheduled in 2023. Songkick is the first to know of new tour announcements and concert information, so if your favorite artists are not currently on tour, join Songkick to track Jeff Mangum and get concert alerts when they play near you, like 18887 other Jeff Mangum fans. 2023. 2022. 2021.

  4. Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum tours again after 14 years

    Neutral Milk Hotel auteur Jeff Mangum isn't trying to be mysterious. ... In March, he curated one of the annual All Tomorrow's Parties concert series, and now he's on his first tour in 14 years.

  5. Neutral Milk Hotel

    Future live shows, etc. announced here. Walkingallofwords.com is the site of NMH Records, the Neutral Milk Hotel, and Jeff Mangum. Here, you'll find Jeff's radio show, releases, and tour information.

  6. Jeff Mangum

    Jeff Mangum. Jeffrey Nye Mangum [2] [3] (born 24 October 1970) is an American singer, songwriter, and musician who gained prominence as the founder, songwriter, vocalist and guitarist of Neutral Milk Hotel, as well for his co-founding of The Elephant 6 Recording Company. [4] Mangum is characterized for his complex, lyrically dense songwriting ...

  7. Neutral Milk Hotel

    TOUR. Future live shows, etc. announced here. Walkingallofwords.com is the site of NMH Records, the Neutral Milk Hotel, and Jeff Mangum. Here, you'll find Jeff's radio show, releases, and tour information.

  8. Releases

    Gramophone t-shirt (green) / $ 20. Electric hive head musician with horn mouth of music t-shirt. / $ 20. walkingwallofwords.com. Walkingallofwords.com is the site of NMH Records, the Neutral Milk Hotel, and Jeff Mangum. Here, you'll find Jeff's radio show, releases, and tour information.

  9. Tour Alert: Jeff Mangum Extends Solo Tour

    3/9 - 3/11 Minehead, UK - All Tomorrow's Parties Curated by Jeff Mangum. 3/13 London, UK Union Chapel SOLD OUT. 3/14 London, UK Union Chapel SOLD OUT. Rise Against. The Chicago punk rockers ...

  10. Jeff Mangum Caps Off Tour With Stunning New York Show

    Neutral Milk Hotel frontman Jeff Mangum was a few songs into his October 29th solo performance at midtown Manhattan's Town Hall, and he'd already asked the crowd once before to sing along. Now ...

  11. Jeff Mangum Tickets

    Biography. Jeff Mangum is the founder and driving force behind what was the band Neutral Milk Hotel and one of the cofounders of the Elephant 6 Collective. Rob Schneider (of The Apples In Stereo ...

  12. The Return and Demystification of Neutral Milk Hotel's Jeff Mangum

    Tickets sold out within minutes, over $40,000 was raised for Knox's recovery and fans were treated to a night of outstanding performances from some of indie-rock's leading lights.

  13. Jeff Mangum

    Find concert tickets for Jeff Mangum upcoming 2024 shows. Explore Jeff Mangum tour schedules, latest setlist, videos, and more on livenation.com

  14. Jeff Mangum Announces Tour Dates, Curates All Tomorrow's Parties

    Mangum has also announced a handful of North American dates in Toronto and on the East Coast. Check out the tour dates below: Aug 12 Toronto, ON Trinity St. Paul's United Church - on sale 2/25

  15. Jeff Mangum Concert Tickets, 2024 Tour Dates & Locations

    While setlists can vary between venues, Jeff Mangum will likely play the following songs on tour: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, Holland, 1945, King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1, Two-Headed Boy, Communist Daughter, King of Carrot Flowers Pts. 2 & 3, Oh Comely, Ghost, The Fool, Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2. Concert Tickets by Genre.

  16. Neutral Milk Hotel: What people get wrong about the In the Aeroplane

    March 01, 20232:22 PM. Amazon and Spaces Hightail. Last week, new reservations came open at the Neutral Milk Hotel. The legendary and (sort-of) long-defunct 1990s indie band released a (sort-of ...

  17. Live Review: Jeff Mangum at Chicago s Athenaeum (2/7)

    Mangum switched guitars frequently, with some lending the crunchier, demo-like sound of a B-side and some recreating the album arrangements note-for-note. Every so often, familiar faces - like former Neutral Milk Hotel members Scott Spillane and Laura Carter - slipped on stage to flesh out familiar riffs with backing horns and strings.

  18. Jeff Mangum Tickets

    Jeff Mangum Concert Experience. Jeff Mangum has become one of the top Rock artists in the 2024 music scene, delighting fans with a unique Rock sound. Jeff Mangum tickets provide an opportunity to be there in person for the next Jeff Mangum concert. So experience it live and be there in person for a 2024 Jeff Mangum Rock concert.

  19. Jeff Mangum

    Get the latest news on Jeff Mangum, including song releases, album announcements, tour dates, festival appearances, and more. ... Jeff Mangum rolls out more tour dates. Another cartridge of dates for this Mangum. January 18, 2013. Future Music Headlines ...

  20. Jeff Mangum

    If you are a true fan of Jeff Mangum, you'll want to know about their concerts before anyone else 👇 Enter Wegow and get your ticket!

  21. Jeff Mangum extends tour, adds more TX shows

    As reported on BV, Neutral Milk Hotel main man Jeff Mangum is currently on a big tour which has just expanded to hit Texas twice on two separate swings through the state, though none in Austin...

  22. Jeff Mangum begins BAM run w/ the Music Tapes tonight, auctioning off

    Jeff Mangum kicks off his sold out three-night run at BAM with The Music Tapes tonight (1/19). The Brooklyn shows are part of a longer tour for the two Neutral Milk Hotel bandmates. Updated dates ...

  23. Jeff Mangum

    Jeff Mangum. Welcome to The Range Planet! Public Relations. Feedback/Contact. Voices, Vocals & Vocalists. ... his live performances on the reunion tour being very impressive. ... 2022 19:29:52 GMT by queenfan11. vagabondtrampster Vocal Novice Offline. Posts: 17 Likes: 2 Join Date: September 2019 Jeff Mangum Nov 2, 2019 5:18:30 GMT via mobile .