Jeff Mangum
From high up in the rib cage of the San Francisco amphitheater, we watch in silence the lone figure of Jeff Magnum stepping into the spotlight, clutching a guitar. It’s been years, and we're almost different people now from the ones who first found Neutral Milk Hotel a viable new tweaking language of broken dream logic and craft fair ejaculate. We can't believe he's alone. All we know is he went crazy after From the Airplane Over the Sea--of course he did. That and On Avery Island were art objects screaming mental illness. But he starts in on The King of Carrot Flowers, Pt. One, that pure punk strum and I'm already fucking swaying.