New Old Video Footage: Jeff Mangum, "Two Headed Boy"

New Old Video Footage: Jeff Mangum, “Two Headed Boy”

So, you know Neutral Milk Hotel’s Jeff Mangum reappeared last year, after going underground for a decade after making what some people believe (what this person believes) is one of the ten-or-twenty-or-so greatest albums of all time, ever, by anyone. The reappearance was brief. And there’s been no new music. But Merge Records recently rereleased In the Aeroplane Over the Sea as well as the band’s other, slightly less perfect album, On Avery Island. And also, in celebration, a pair of video clips of Mangum playing solo at the Knitting Factory in 1998. The footage is, umm, intense. He is like a cross between John Fogerty in 1969 and Jack Nicholson, all frozen solid at the end of The Shining. When he open his mouth to holler, you can almost see his eyes rolling back in his head like a shark. Like he is feeding on his bonkers. And he is so, so, so good.