Dear listeners,
One of my favorite albums of the year comes out today: “Manning Fireworks” by the North Carolina singer-songwriter-guitarist MJ Lenderman, a young artist with an old soul and a keen eye for observational detail that makes his canted portraits of small-town life come alive. I believe so strongly that Lenderman is worth your time that today’s playlist is an introduction to — or, if you’re already familiar, a refresher on — his music and his surrounding scene in Asheville.
There’s a fine art to writing songs that are both comedic and heartbreaking, but Lenderman has the knack: His best lines smart like resounding wallops to the funny bone. “I wouldn’t be in the seminary if I could be with you,” he howls atop jangly, bittersweet chords on “Rudolph,” a single from the new album which you’ll hear on today’s playlist. I love that lyric because it showcases one of Lenderman’s songwriting superpowers, his sense of concision. There’s basically an entire tragicomic short story in those 12 simple words.
The drollness and economy of his writing sometimes reminds me of the great folk singer Bill Callahan, so I wasn’t surprised when Lenderman mentioned, in Will Hermes’s recent Times interview, his love of Callahan’s earlier project Smog. Other Lendermanian touchstones include, to my ears, the shambolic blaze of Neil Young and Crazy Horse, the twangy sparkle of early R.E.M. and the sad-sack poetry of the Silver Jews frontman David Berman. But another thing I love about Lenderman’s music is the way he manages to carry the weight of rock history with both sincerity and an irreverent lightness. “Rudolph” and the final song on this playlist, “Knockin,” riff on Bob Dylan lyrics, while the new album’s closer, “Bark at the Moon,” is, in part, about playing the titular Ozzy Osbourne tune … on Guitar Hero.
In addition to his solo work, Lenderman is the guitarist in the punky Southern rock group Wednesday and has also played on records by indie mainstays like Waxahatchee and Indigo De Souza. I’ve included tracks from those artists, too, to give a wider sense of Lenderman’s musical milieu.
I don’t know what fans of Lenderman call themselves — Lenderheads? Lendermen? Lendermaniacs? — but regardless, count me among their ranks. Perhaps you’ll join us, too.
Don’t move to New York City, babe, it’s gonna change the way you dress,
Lindsay
Listen along while you read.
1. MJ Lenderman: “She’s Leaving You”
“You can put your clothes back on, she’s leaving you”: How’s that for an opening line? The lead single from “Manning Fireworks” expertly blends pathos and bleak humor, tracing the aftermath of a breakup that also sounds like a midlife crisis: “Go rent a Ferrari, and sing the blues/Believe that Clapton was the second coming.” But Lenderman somehow turns this chronicle of almost achingly banal male behavior into a bona fide anthem, complete with a fist-pumping chorus and a killer guitar solo. In the final moments, the song is reduced to just the plaintive backing vocals of the Wednesday frontwoman Karly Hartzman singing, “She’s leaving you” — which becomes even more poignant if you know that she and Lenderman used to be a couple.
2. Wednesday: “Chosen to Deserve”
Speaking of Hartzman, here’s my favorite song from Wednesday’s 2023 album “Rat Saw God,” which showcases her affecting yowl and her unique songwriting voice. Hartzman is a sharp enough lyricist to hinge this song’s emotional progression on the subtlest turns of phrase — “the girl that you’ve been chosen to deserve” becomes, eventually, “the girl that you have chosen to deserve.” Her firsthand observations about the boredom of adolescence are at once ordinary and devastating, while Lenderman’s guitar playing gives the song some added muscle.
3. MJ Lenderman: “Hangover Game”
The scrappy leadoff track from Lenderman’s 2022 release, “Boat Songs,” is, to my knowledge, the only tune ever written about Game 5 of the 1997 N.B.A. Finals, but if you can think of another, I would love to hear it. “Hangover Game” concerns the historical event more commonly known as the Flu Game, when Michael Jordan heroically transcended gastrointestinal distress to score 38 points and lead the Chicago Bulls to victory. Here, Lenderman entertains a controversial theory that the Flu Game was actually the Hangover Game. Not that he’s judging Jordan if that was indeed the case: Over fuzzy, distorted guitar, Lenderman shrugs, “Yeah, I love drinkin’ too.”
4. MJ Lenderman: “Joker Lips”
Embroidered with laid-back, mid-tempo guitar licks, this gently rocking highlight from “Manning Fireworks” is full of vividly absurd images (“Coward cutting Joker lips into a rubber mask”) and quintessentially Lendermanian wisdom. “Please don’t laugh,” he implores with a straight face. “Only half of what I say is a joke.”
5. Waxahatchee featuring MJ Lenderman: “Right Back to It”
Lenderman plays guitar on every track of Waxahatchee’s acclaimed 2024 album “Tiger’s Blood” and is a featured backing vocalist on its lead single, the warm and twangy “Right Back to It.” His voice blends well with that of Waxahatchee’s Katie Crutchfield on the chorus, meeting her airy falsetto with his earthy croak.
6. MJ Lenderman: “Tastes Just Like It Costs”
Here’s a caustic character sketch of a couple getting into an argument outside of a butcher shop, “Where we bought our expensive meat that we had planned to eat.” Lenderman gets compared to Neil Young a lot, and while I hear plenty of other influences in his music, this corrosive, yelpy track from “Boat Songs” is definitely him at his most “Rust Never Sleeps.”
7. Indigo De Souza: “Darker Than Death”
Before he established himself as a solo artist, Lenderman played drums for Indigo De Souza, an Asheville, N.C.-based singer-songwriter with a wrenching vocal style. She plumbs the depths of her psyche on this highlight from her 2021 album, “Any Shape You Take.”
8. MJ Lenderman: “Rudolph”
Lenderman’s nasally, deadpan delivery gives this song a wry edge. It begins, too, with one of the most memorably surreal images on “Manning Fireworks,” imagining a companion of Santa’s favorite red-nosed reindeer getting brutally run over by Pixar’s own Lightning McQueen. “My dad asked me who that was,” Lenderman said in an interview with The Guardian, “and I had to explain it was an animated car.”
9. MJ Lenderman: “Knockin”
Finally, this 2023 one-off single remains one of Lenderman’s most affecting songs to date. It’s also especially indicative of the interplay between irony and sincerity — and rock past and present — that enlivens his perspective. After riffing dryly on a notorious viral video of the golfer John Daly performing a barroom cover of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” the song slowly builds toward a climax of Lenderman belting out his own disarmingly earnest rendition of the Dylan classic, his voice cracking with emotion as he realizes those endlessly quoted lines are actually the perfect way to describe a fleeting moment of bliss.
The Amplifier Playlist
“Meet MJ Lenderman, Southern Rock’s Tragicomic Poet” track list
Track 1: MJ Lenderman, “She’s Leaving You”
Track 2: Wednesday, “Chosen to Deserve”
Track 3: MJ Lenderman, “Hangover Game”
Track 4: MJ Lenderman, “Joker Lips”
Track 5: Waxahatchee featuring MJ Lenderman, “Right Back to It”
Track 6: MJ Lenderman, “Tastes Just Like It Costs”
Track 7: Indigo De Souza, “Darker Than Death”
Track 8: MJ Lenderman, “Rudolph”
Track 9: MJ Lenderman, “Knockin”
Bonus Tracks
Speaking of Bob Dylan, there’s a massive collection of live recordings from his 1974 tour with the Band coming out on Sept. 20. (431 tracks in total!) We have one of its versions of “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” recorded at Madison Square Garden, in today’s Friday Playlist, along with new songs from Linkin Park (who just added a new vocalist, Emily Armstrong), Halsey, The The and more. Listen here.
The post Meet MJ Lenderman, Southern Rock’s Tragicomic Poet appeared first on New York Times.
