I don’t think there’s any way to say how happy this makes me. This could be the most egregious cash grab in the world and it could still mean the world to me to be able to see this band. I saw Jeff twice on these recent tours and both times it deeply. NMH has been my favorite band for nearly a decade now, which is saying a lot for a guy who hasn’t been alive that long. I’ve written these lyrics on sneakers, backpacks, middle school notebooks, high school notebooks, college notebooks, graduate school notebooks, and I’m getting ready to get these lyrics tattooed into me with my younger brother this summer. I’ve owned INTAOTS in every imaginable format, read and reread the 33 1/3 book, and scoured the internet for bootlegs.

I guess the purpose behind all this ranting and obsessing is that for many of us, music is still a deeply experience. And for me, this album has moved me like nothing else in my life has. I’m driving 8 hours to be at that show with my brother. And we will dance.

This was an awful waste of an opportunity to coin the phrase “Mangumming their pants”.

April Ludgate is smiling (on the inside)

we still doing that?

Jeff Magnum

Come on, universe. Give him a daughter while he’s still young.

I hope you bought him a drink first.

This tour is almost half japanese, and the other half of the tour is with Half Japanese

An MBV album, a Bowie album, Daft Punk on the way, Arrested Development in May, Boards of Canada on the way, NMH are back…
2013 you sonuvabitch.

Thanks Obama.

its true. All the music snobs always rave about how this band is the apex of musical perfection.

I’m feeling pretty neutral about this. And a little thirsty for some Holiday Inn-level milk.

But srsly, NMH is really boring and sounds like shit. tOTC is way better. Bro.

Neutral Milk Hotel is back together proving even indie-rock’s finest is not above stooping to the level of the reunion tour cash grab.

I still haven’t gotten worst comment of the week people….

…and thus on this day, hipsters across the world creamed their pants in delight

Yeah, I’m the guy with the Jeff Mangum avatar so maybe I’m speaking from a biased position but somebody makes this exact same comment everytime anyone who’s at one point stopped making/performing music for a while decides to make/perform music again. Are you really that cynical that you couldn’t possibly believe that a reunion of this sort (not just for NMH, but for any band or any returning musician) might be something other than a cashgrab? Yeah, after years off, bands like NMH, MBV, Pavement, Guided By Voices, The D-Plan, have built up a legend that’ll make anything they do now way more profitable than what they were doing back in the 90s. But maybe, just maybe that’s just a positive side effect and not the cause in and of itself. I mean shit, high schools and colleges have reunions. Friends who haven’t seen each other in years meet back up. Why, when a band does something similar does it have to mean they’re angling for some cash.
Furthermore, even if it is to any extent a cashgrab, who gives a fuck? Are we all that averse to people making money? As someone who’s seen Pavement and Jeff Mangum in the past few years, I can tell you, they still were worth every penny I spent on seeing them. Their music and ability to perform hasn’t diminished a bit (at least for the Pavement show I saw, though I heard band tensions made some of that reunion tour less than perfect). I just don’t get why indie culture has latched so strongly onto needlessly cynical shit.