Rihanna released her new album Talk That Talk last Wednesday. A few weeks ago, I wrote about the video for her single “We Found Love.” Honestly, I’ve only heard that song off the album and judging by how often I still listen to it, it will probably remain the only song I hear off the album.
In the musical news realm that is exactly opposite of Rihanna – Neutral Milk Hotel’s enigmatic leader Jeff Mangum announced North American tour dates for 2012. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Neutral Milk Hotel was a band formed by Mangum in the early ’90s, which released the album In the Aeroplane Over the Sea in 1998. Aeroplane, which is inspired by the story of Anne Frank, garnered near critical acclaim and now holds legendary status within indie music circles. However, after touring in support of the album, the group went on hiatus and Mangum became sort of a recluse in terms of releasing music. In fact, someone recently made the comparison of Mangum to Jesus. Mangum rose from obscurity (Ruston, LA to be exact). Helped start a collective (the Elephant 6 Collective, a group of likeminded bands and musicians). Released a really great album (insert gospel parallels). Fell back into obscurity (insert death parallels). And now, this tour is his resurrection. See? It kind of makes sense. Anyway, this is why the announcement of a tour is such exciting news. Tickets for the Minneapolis show have already sold out but I’m sure if you check on Craigslist in a week you can find some asshole scalping them for a couple grand. Like this guy: http://stereogum.com/720612/jeff-mangum-tix-on-sale-for-5600/news/
Anyway, if you’re not familiar with NMH but your interest has been piqued, here is a video of Mangum performing some cuts from Aeroplane. Honestly though when you have the time, you should listen to the album in its entirety.
Well, that’s pretty much all I have for now. Pretty soon though, some of my favorite magazines and websites will be publishing their year-end lists which is always annoying because it always causes unnecessary backlash. I’ll try my best not to do the same in upcoming posts. Oh well. Here is a great song from Drake that I will leave you with (the album that it comes from will probably be on many best of 2011 lists).