My ticket stub from last night says “Jeff Mangum: 2012 Spring Season.” I’m thinking this morning about what a wonderful phrase that is, how unlikely it once would have seemed. It’s a new year, and Jeff Mangum’s comeback tour is rolling on. In a few months he’ll play Coachella. How lucky are we?
Seven years ago, I was there when he came out for one song – shaky at first, then transcendent – at an Olivia Tremor Control reunion show at the Bowery Ballroom. It felt like a very big deal. I waited another five years before huddling in the basement of Le Poisson Rouge with maybe 500 other barely-believing fans, all of us quietly whispering along in the dark to every word of his five-song acoustic set. Those tickets, which went toward Chris Knox’s medical bills, weren’t cheap, but we didn’t care. Then came last year’s triumphant return – an actual tour! – and I found myself at Town Hall in October, singing along to “Holland, 1945” at the top of my lungs.
I’ve seen him enough times now that last night’s BAM show felt less like a miraculous fever dream, more like a simple performance by one of my favorite musicians. That didn’t make it any less special. Jeff said he was feeling a little weak, but it hardly showed as he delivered one white-knuckled tour de force after another. Three songs in, someone asked for “Little Birds,” and he complied with a rendition so spectacularly raw and painful it left me shaken. Someone else asked for “Communist Daughter,” and he declined with a joke.
Where the shows at Le Poisson Rouge and Town Hall were strictly solo acoustic, this time he edged closer to the old Neutral Milk Hotel sound, inviting Julian Koster to play his singing saw on “Engine,” bringing the horn players from the Music Tapes out for the end of “Oh Comely.” They all did “The Fool” together to end the main set. For the encore, he called us down to the foot of the stage, where we swayed and hugged and sang along to “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” one more time. Jeff was smiling wide.
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