Jeff Mangum - Paramount Theatre (Asbury Park, NJ; Oct. 3, 2011)

Pluck all your silly strings
And bend all your notes for me
Soft silly music is meaningful, magical.

I never thought I would see Jeff Mangum play. A notable recluse, he was underwater for over a decade, popping his head to the surface only to join a group song or two at friends’ shows once or twice since the turn of the millennium. Last year, he broke that silence to play a five song set at the Chris Knox benefit in New York. People cried in the audience. In March of this year, I bought tickets to see the Elephant 6 Holiday Surprise tour in hopes he might play a single song on stage; instead, he stood in front of me in the crowd. Weirdly, his presence gave me goosebumps.

I thought that was as close as I would ever get to seeing Jeff Mangum play, until he announced a short run of tour dates this fall. I stumbled into a ticket. When asked in Baltimore why he decided to tour again, Mangum told the crowd: “I played the Chris Knox benefit last year. I saw how it made people happy and that made me happy.”

I saw Jeff Mangum play last night, at the Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park – a stoically decrepit locale with an aura only found in slowly fading theaters. Though little about the show would reflect it, this theater holds particular interest for its location in Asbury Park, the old stomping grounds of New Jersey’s favorite son Bruce Springsteen. It was a seated show, and one of the few times I welcomed that fact. Jeff Mangum is not a musician you should be forced to jostle for elbow room to see.

He took the stage after a warm-up from A Hawk And A Hacksaw – led by former Neutral Milk Hotel drummer Jeremy Barnes – that was part globetrot and part old-school bar mitzvah. Mangum’s first couple of songs sounded just a tad forced, as if he wasn’t fully at ease on stage. Later in the night he would refer to his chest tightening up during a tense moment, which is an accurate description of his sound during the first couple of tunes.

That soon sloughed away, however, as the crowd began to sing along and he seemed to brighten. He encouraged the audience to shout questions at him, as he has at other recent shows, and they obliged with the usual clamor – “I love you,” “Play Two Headed Boy,” “I like your hat.” “Are you enjoying this?” asked one fan from the back of the theater. “Very much,” Mangum replied.

As a singer, Mangum is magnificent, a one of a kind voice in the way that few artists are. His nasal but substantial voice is difficult to imitate, and his songs on stage are a near pitch-perfect reincarnation of his well-known and –loved album cuts. The difference, if you can find it, lies in the split seconds between each note. The transition from one note to another is often choppy and quick; the songs are often cut off abruptly. Mangum is more concerned with hitting the notes open throat and dead on, which he does nearly flawlessly.

The set was everything one could hope for, although it would be tough to be disappointed with even a random grab of Neutral Milk Hotel’s 24 album cuts. “Oh Comely” was devastating as always, long-memorized lyrics sounding fresh all over again. Mangum seemed to take particular pleasure in On Avery Island tracks “Gardenhead,” “A Baby For Pree,” and “Song Against Sex.” A Hawk And A Hacksaw even joined him for two short bursts – most notably closing the concert with “The Fool” to follow an encore of “Two Headed Boy.”

Perhaps the most unexpected highlight of the evening, though, was Mangum’s performance of “Little Birds,” an off-the-cuff decision he made after picking up and then putting down the guitar he would later use to play “Two Headed Boy.” “I’ve only played this song once before, on the day I recorded it,” he said. “I wrote it in one day in 1998 and haven’t played it since.”

In the pin-drop quiet of the auditorium, the song was crushing and beautiful:

Daddy, come towards me, I could see his hands were shaking
Put his hands against me, he could feel their bodies breaking
Pushed me to the floor and put his hands up for a beating
“I don’t want to hear it anymore,” he kept repeating
“Do you really want the burning hell to come and get you?

“Did you see the burning hell it took your baby brother?
Did you see how far he fell and how he made us suffer?
Another boy in town at night he took him for his lover,
and deep in sin they held each other.
So I took a hammer, nearly beat his little brains in,
knowing God in heaven no could never could forgive him.”

When Mangum finished, drained, the crowd awoke from its fixation, applauding the riveting and emotional performance. Mangum noted that it had taken him years to come to terms with the song – “and this,” he said motioning toward the crowd. He held up two fingers while saying, “two times in thirteen years.”

“It felt good to give that away,” he said.

DOWNLOAD: Jeff Mangum - Two-Headed Boy (MP3) or Follow us for more Jeff Mangum MP3s (Twitter)

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