Patrick M.

Feb. 8, 2012 at 12:46pm with 15 notes

Meg and I went to see Jeff Mangum a couple nights ago

And it was good? It was a strange experience since it was for the most part just him (plus four guitars, arranged so it was kind of like he and four guitars were sitting around a campfire), so it was subdued in that sense, but also Jesus Christ his voice.

All of the times on Aeroplane and Avery Island where it sounds like he’s pushing his voice past its limit, I guess I always imagined that he then took a three week break drinking nothing but lemon tea and anti-vocal-nodule cream before recording the next song, but he pierced every note like he had an electrified note piercing machine (IDK). Sometimes the note was hit at the expense of enunciation, if that makes sense. Like he just dipthonged his way up and all the consonants got lost in the glissando (it unfortunately made me think of someone who is out of practice with speaking to people; I don’t mean this as a criticism, nor do I believe that he is out of practice w/r/t speaking).

In between songs he encouraged the audience to either sing along or in general not be so polite, and people shouted questions to/at him, and some of these questions were so stupid (“Who would win in a fight between Spiderman and Batman?”) and some were things I might have wanted to ask but would neeeeeevvver have asked (“Where have you been?”) and others were informational or who knows what (“Was that a new song or is it on an album?”; “Do you believe in reincarnation?”) and every time someone yelled something, I felt like Jimmy Fallon in the “More Cowbell” sketch: “Don’t blow this for us, Gene!” But he answered them all (respectively: “Man, I have no idea”; either “Living my life” or “Living with the love of my life”; “No”; and “I’m doing it now” (!)) and then tore into another song.

Anyway, it was amazing to hear all the songs both stripped down instrumentally but with his crazy raw forceful voice and I highly recommend your building a time machine and going to see it with us. It was on Monday. Please sneak in some better beer.