On Saturday night (Oct. 12, 2013) Neutral Milk Hotel played the second show of their comeback tour, performing at The National in Richmond, VA.
Here’s fan footage from that show of the group and fans performing “In The Aeroplane Over The Sea.”
Here’s the set list for the night.
If you missed my post about the opening night of Neural Milk Hotel’s world tour, check it out now.
Another day another Banksy. This month is truly an overflow of riches. No way to predict what Banksy will do before he does it.
On his website Banksy writes:
Some people criticize me for using sources that are a bit low brow (this quote is from ‘Gladiator’) but you know what? “I’m just going to use that hostility to make me stronger, not weaker” as Kelly Rowland said on the X Factor.
This is a beautiful performance by Patti Smith and her original band at the Capitol Theater in Passaic, New Jersey, 1979. You really get a sense of the mystery of Smith’s ’70s performances. They were other worldly. I was lucky enough to see her at the Boarding House in San Francisco and at the Longbranch in Berkeley in 1975.
Check out “Gloria” too:
The mysterious street artist Banksy says he set up a stall in Central Park yesterday, October 12, 2013, and with original signed Banksy art for sale at $60 a piece and had few takers.
That’s insane.
Hey Banksy, I’m in California, but if I’d been in NYC and seen your stall I’d have bought some of the pieces. A few years ago I was at Venice Beach and someone had a stall with t-shirts with some of your art on them and some small canvases with your art on them as well and they looked great and I bought a t-shirt and two of the pieces, which I dig the most.
Feel free to contact me if you want to unload some of those unsold canvases.
Anyway, here’s what’s on Banksy’s website:
Yesterday I set up a stall in the park selling 100% authentic original signed Banksy canvases.
For $60 each.
The artist also says:
Please note: This was a one off. The stall will not be there again today.
Check this out. On the Animal blog, we learn:
“Antigrav appears to have tracked down the source image for this stencil [“Concrete Confessioinal”].
The [black and white] photo was shot by famed lensman Berni Schoenfield in the 1950s and was posted as the “Photograph of the Day” by The Telegraph in 2009. According to the paper, it depicts a Jesuit priest at the Martyr’s Shrine in Ontario:
Taken in 1955, near Midland in Ontario, this photograph shows a Jesuit priest hearing confession at a site commemorating the first missionaries in Huron county. They arrived in 1626 intending to convert the Iriquois but were martyred ten years later.
Bill Callahan plays songs from his new album, Dream River and talks about his music. Interview/recording from Studio 360.
The indie art-rock band Neutral Milk Hotel returned to the stage after a 15-year absence and delivered a “stunning show,” according to Roger Hartley, a fan who was in the audience. The first performance of the group’s world tour took place in Baltimore’s 2640 Space at St. John’s Church Friday night (Oct. 11, 2013). Photos and recording were not allowed but a fan shot the video clip at the top of this post.
Jeff Mangum, the band’s idiosyncratic leader, “stepped out under the lights looking like he’d been holed up in a fire lookout cabin for a decade,” according to Jasper Colt, a long-time fan who posted a review of the show on his blog.
“Mangum’s face was covered in a long beard and his hair hung down to his shoulders,” John Gentile reported at Rolling Stone. “Even his eyes were obscured by the shadows cast from the brim of his cap.” Gentile also noted: “Although Mangum’s voice has dropped slightly since the release of the 1998’s In The Aeroplane Over the Sea, it has also become much more rich and much more powerful.”
“The setting was perfect,” Jasper Colt wrote in his blog post. “The nave of the quaintly dilapidated Saint John’s Church in the Charles Village neighborhood is known simply as 2640 Space, and comes complete with vaulted ceilings and stained glass windows.”
The hour and a half, 18-song set began with “Two-Headed Boy” and “The Fool,” and ended with “Engine.” Neutral Milk Hotel performed songs off both albums, 1996′s On Avery Island and 1998′s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea, and from their 1994 EP, Everything Is. The group played no new material. Elf Power was the show opener.
“Thankfully, they kept the stage banter to a bare minimum and stuck to what they do best, covering a good portion of their catalog in the ninety minute set,” Colt, a Washington, D.C.-based photographer wrote. “Each carefully orchestrated masterpiece rang true with the full ensemble of brass, percussion, keyboards and singing saws. There were a few issues with the sound system, but these were easily forgiven in the excitement. The real highlight of the show, for my money, was the haunting sincerity of Mangum’s voice that first drew me into his recordings. Time may have taken its toll on the walls of this old nave, but his sweet and familiar tone remains unscathed.”
“Throughout the show, multi-instrumentalist Julian Koster was as much a centerpiece as Mangum,” Gentile of Rolling Stone wrote. “While Mangum held onto his guitar for the entire set, Koster constantly shifted between instruments, even in the middle of songs, going from the accordion to a banjo to a handsaw played with a bow. That handsaw added the spooky whirl in the background of ‘In the Aeroplane Over the Sea’ and witnessing the carpentry tool live in action was quite a sight.”
“All musicians and songs were tight,” Hartley wrote. “Loved Scott Spillane singing words to every song to himself as he awaited horn parts…incredible drums…and Julian Koster playful as ever. The stunning silence of the audience between songs was remarkable. Something I’ve never seen or heard after years of shows. Each anticipating the next and unwilling to do anything to break the warmth in that room. I saw more emotions in one place. Glee … Tears… Excitement…even a little dancing.”
Setlist:
Two-Headed Boy
The Fool
Holland, 1945
A Baby for Pree
Garden Head Leave Me Alone
Everything Is
King of Carrot Flowers
Aeroplane
Oh Comely
Song Against Sex
Ruby Bulbs
Snow Song Pt. 1
Ghost
Untitled (The Penny Arcade in California)
Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2
Encore:
Naomi
Ferris Wheel on Fire
Engine
You can hear all the recorded versions of the songs the group played here.
This post was updated at 2:21 p.m. PST.
Here’s a sharp review of the show at Consequence Of Sound.
And here’s a half hour of live Neutral Milk Hotel from 1998.
Banksy calls this “Concrete confessional,” according to his website.
No audio guide today.
Arcade Fire’s Reflektor is due October 29, 2013. Meanwhile they’ve released this short piece of the song “Awful Sound.”
David Byrne is not happy about streaming music services such as Spotify.
In a long essay in The Guardian, he thoughtfully discusses the impact these services are having on musicians.
“In future, if artists have to rely almost exclusively on the income from these services, they’ll be out of work within a year,” Byrne writes.
Later in the piece he says: “I also don’t understand the claim of discovery that Spotify makes; the actual moment of discovery in most cases happens at the moment when someone else tells you about an artist or you read about them – not when you’re on the streaming service listening to what you have read about (though Spotify does indeed have a “discovery” page that, like Pandora’s algorithm, suggests artists you might like). There is also, I’m told, a way to see what your “friends” have on their playlists, though I’d be curious to know whether a significant number of people find new music in this way. I’d be even more curious if the folks who “discover” music on these services then go on to purchase it. Why would you click and go elsewhere and pay when the free version is sitting right in front of you? Am I crazy?”
Disclaimer: I once worked at Mog, which is now a streaming music service owned by Beats.
Read Byrne’s essay at The Guardian.