Neutral Milk Hotel reunites, returns to tour

By August Brown

April 29, 2013 12 AM PT

Fans of folk-experimentalists Neutral Milk Hotel already thought their long-thwarted dreams had come true, when singer Jeff Mangum came out of a decade of hiding to play a string of solo shows.

For his next round, however, he won’t be alone. Neutral Milk Hotel on Monday announced a new tour with all four members of the band’s most celebrated lineup.

The band’s website lists only five dates, three in Athens, Ga., in October followed by two dates in Asia, though the tour site promises “more to come.” The touring lineup of Jeff Mangum, Jeremy Barnes, Scott Spillane and Julian Koster played on the group’s 1998 album “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,” which has gone gold and remains a perpetual vinyl bestseller. Mangum recently re-released it as part of a massive vinyl box set of the band’s whole catalog.

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The announcement also came with a typically cryptic communique from the band:

“and of water course womb rume is a wandering the welkin woman whose fune caul is all umbilical cord code that comes equipped with read volve vît curtains that ‘un seel my v’l én tich radio reason in remembrance of mademoiselle gabrielle and her wone tym pad lock of burd language as it borders on twin tolk the wolk king wall of woolpack pigeons pointing to the fly blind readers riddle and his rian boh”

While we can’t claim to knows what much of that means, it’s only elevated the allure a full NMH return.

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