Best Music News Hoax of the Year?

Yeah, this was a hoax which gained legs when Pitchfork said it was real. Why, oh why, would I ever trust Pitchfork "news"? If they're not stealing headlines from Billboard, it's just not gonna be right.

Everyone and their mother is reporting the incredible news -- Neutral Milk Hotel appears to be back in business after a lengthy, mysterious absence. Jeff Mangum dropped the following post on the Elephant 6 message board:

hello again.

for the past few months ive been putting together the pieces of everything ive written in the past three years and its been a revelation. whenever i had the time ive been writing melodies and keeping them in my head for later, and songs just accumulate, im not waiting as some have said. i still dont know how we're going to put it all together, the songs will have more noises and collages in them. because of that we dont know whether this will be korena pang or neutral milk hotel or michael bolton but that doesnt really matter. names are just a box we put things in to separate them, and we're figuring out what box these songs go in.

we dont have a timetable for releasing the album yet, so dont get your hopes up for new songs now. if you want more "aeroplane" just ignore all of this, the songs are songs but they're longer and more free. when jeremy came down after his tour we just spent days playing noise while screaming and it was incredibly liberating.

it has been so much fun that we will for sure be playing a show or two, probably more. freedom is a wonderful thing but at a certain point you need the routines of normal life. ive had that for a while but i realized last year at the show with the livys that the best sort of normal ive ever had was on the road with my friends. getting to gigs late with cars coughing and trombones smacking on doors, the giant egg leaks over the masses, the yolk sustains us, we eat whites for days. it can never be the same but i need to get as close as i can to that again.

so thats all. everything is happening soon, this is the year.

thanks for listening. jeff.

And, according to Pitchfork, there's actual verification that these are, indeed, Jeff's words.

In a word -- spectacular.