CONCERT REVIEW: Jeff Mangum @ Irvine Auditorium 1/25

"Worried" is not the usual fan-to-artist relationship but, for some Neutral Milk Hotel fans, Jeff Mangum's decade-plus sabbatical often made us wonder if the guy was, you know, okay. He seemed to be doing just fine on Wednesday night.

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CONCERT REVIEW: Jeff Mangum @ Irvine Auditorium 1/25

POSTED: Thursday, January 26, 2012, 6:58 AM

Filed Under: Music Concert Review

“Worried” is not the usual fan-to-artist relationship but, for some Neutral Milk Hotel fans, Jeff Mangum’s decade-plus sabbatical often made us wonder if the guy was, you know, okay. He seemed to be doing just fine on Wednesday night.

Sprinting through a solo set of unforgotten favorites from 1996’s On Avery Island and 1998’s In the Aeroplane over the Sea, Mangum appeared to be a man comfortable in his own skin. Well, he did seem irked by the formality of the seated theater, and encouraged fans to record the show (audio only), crowd the aisles and sing along. That last part was a bit daunting as Mangum’s marvelously brassy voice was in fighting shape. When he was really cranking up the intensity (the long, bellowing “I love you Jesus Christ” intro to “The King of Carrot Flowers, Part 1,” for instance) it was easiest just to sit back and absorb the power and joy of the moment.

Though the tickets were purchased months ago in some sort of record-breaking R5 box office fury, and Mangum had already returned to public performance in short bursts over the last two years, the unlikelihood of the moment — seeing this perennial critics’ candidate for Greatest Living Songwriter again, the guy whose esteem snowballed with each passing year of noticeable hermitude — was an adrenaline rush. How strange to hear these songs again, to see Jeff Mangum again, when we’d long since learned to be happy with what we had (which isn’t much: two albums, some singles, a few years worth of bootlegs — all of which are being handsomely repackaged).

And if the man spent the 2000s writing new material, he didn’t share any of it at the Irvine Auditorium. For the singer and the listener, the evening was merely a chance to show how much each means to the other. Mangum was obviously humbled by the enthusiastic, if overly polite, outpouring from the 1,200 capacity crowd. (Neutral Milk Hotel’s only trip through Philly was, if memory serves, a sold-out show at the relatively tiny Pontiac Grille in 1998.) He likened his surprising and untended longevity to a message in a bottle set adrift some 15 years ago, finding the right ears despite the odds.

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Featuring everything from event roundups to concert reviews and sex talk, City Paper's Critical Mass is a space for off-the-wall coverage of Philly's A&E scene.

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