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my roommate went and he was a bit disappointed at the sound - he said it was too large and tended to just absorb the sound.

how was the sound? i have heard mixed reviews about live concerts at lowes

If it makes you feel any better, tickets were sold out absurdly quick and you had to have your name on it with ID to prevent scalping. So if you hadn't heard about it until yesterday, you still wouldn't have been able to go.

Sorry you missed it, great show you can catch them agin in New Orleans. I agree it was not advertised as much in JC like it was on the L.E.S and Williamsburg. I guess JC is considered a goo goo dolls town.

Yeah, and thanks to the very poorly advertised show...cept to fans of the band obviously...myself and others had no idea until after it had taken place.

By JON PARELES

JERSEY CITY ? After a 15-year absence, the reunited Neutral Milk Hotel could have satisfied its fans at the Loew?s Jersey Theater here on Tuesday night with a rote run-through of the music it recorded in the 1990s. But the band did more than that: It revved up and magnified all the impulses that collide in Jeff Mangum?s songs, which have continued to collect and baffle fans since Neutral Milk Hotel released its last studio album, ?In the Aeroplane Over the Sea,? in 1998. The band used to play clubs; now it is headlining sold-out theaters.

Neutral Milk Hotel?s music had all the ingredients for the spiraling cult reputation it drew. It stayed unkempt enough to deter most casual listeners and profound enough to reward its serious fans.

Mr. Mangum?s songs are musically blunt ? usually a few hard-strummed chords driving the ornery holler of his voice ? but subject to metamorphosis. They can be enfolded in brass chorales, walloped by punk drumbeats, blasted with distortion or haloed by sustained lines played (by Julian Koster) on a musical saw.

And the lyrics that Mr. Mangum rattles off beg for interpretation: They ponder sex, God, family, war, pity, rage, yearning, disgust, emptiness and the possibility of love. They are also, often, among the best run-on sentences in rock songwriting.

Facing an audience that long ago memorized its recordings, Neutral Milk Hotel kept the songs largely recognizable. But with an onstage lineup that could expand to seven ? coming and going as they were needed, occasionally leaving Mr. Mangum to strum alone ? the band members fleshed out their implications. The punk got rowdier; the brass (with up to three horns) grew richer. ?Ferris Wheel on Fire? was fully realized as a power-chorded chantey, and ?Ruby Bulbs,? with a deep horn-section drone and eruptive cymbal crashes, traded the low-fi noise of the studio version for the gravity of a Tibetan Buddhist ceremony.

Through it all, Mr. Mangum sang his enigmas with clarity and conviction, and the band took nothing for granted, for a show where foot-stomping and pondering were fully compatible.

Mr. Mangum was a founder of Elephant 6, a 1990s record label and musicians? collective that was fond of do-it-yourself sound and psychedelic whimsy. Elf Power, another Elephant 6 band, opened the show with its literate, straightforward folk-rock songs.

Strumming an electric, 12-string guitar, Andrew Rieger often sang about aimlessness and lack of purpose ? ?Was it all a useless waste of time?? he wondered in ?Strange Designs.? The paradox was that unlike Neutral Milk Hotel, Elf Power has persisted through the 2000s.

NYT