MJ Lenderman

One Liner:  One of my favorite albums of 2024 full of indie rock/alt country beauty

Wikipedia Genre:  Indie rock, alt-country, country rock, slacker rock

Home: Asheville, NC

Poster Position: Top Quarter - Line 5
Both Weekends.
Friday.

Thoughts:  I was freaking PSYCHED to see this on the poster.  He came to town touring behind that new Manning Fireworks album and I couldn't get there because of some dang other commitment, so the idea that I can still catch these songs live makes me immeasurably pleased.  

I watched his Tiny Desk the other day and my wife had lots of thoughts about his style.  Like his look, not his musical style.  Mark Jacob Lenderman was previously part of the band Wednesday.  He was born in Asheville, North Carolina.  Have you ever been there?  I know it got a lot of attention after last year's horrible flooding, but I took the wife there several years back to celebrate some benchmark birthday or other.  I did a terrible job of it all.  The AirBnb I rented was like 15 minutes outside of town and felt like the setting for a slasher movie, and then we went to do fun activities at the Biltmore and another fancy pants hotel, which only exacerbated the unpleasantness of our accommodations.  Anyway, Lenderman grew up there, and in high school started posting music to Bandcamp.  He ended up doing a little time at UNC Asheville, before he got serious about music.  

His first disc, 2019's MJ Lenderman, has low stream counts but shows the where he is going with this sort of Sunvolt-esque rocking country sound.  The opening minute sounds like Neil Young and Ragged Glory tearing into a garage rock anthem.  But the big difference between this early stuff and the work he is doing now is that he has tightened up the songs and cleaned up the sound.  "Basketball #1" feels like it gets slower and slower as it slogs along its 8:19 runtime.  Only one song on this disc is under 5 minutes, and five are over 7 minutes.  Clean your shit up, MJ.

2021's Ghost of Your Guitar Solo doesn't really get him into the right spot.  The first song brings to mind Crazy Horse again, where it is mainly just a raw guitar shred for almost five minutes.  The second song sounds like he is singing underwater about eating too much at the fair.  It's muddy and vaguely unpleasant.  The top song sounds like he is figuring out what he can be like.  "Someone Get the Grill Out of the Rain" has 5.2 million streams.

That is slacker rock gold right there, just meandering around like a throwaway he came up with in fifteen seconds while looking out his back window.  But overall, this album would not have won me over if it had been the first thing I had heard.

2022's Boat Songs finds him aiming for the breakout.  I like the opening track where he is debunking the Jordan food poisoning game in Utah over a raucous indie rock track.  "I love drinkin' too, I love drinkin' too" is a great line.  Haha - reviewing the hotel bill like a true investigator.

But then the real breakout was 2024's Manning Fireworks.  Here is the review I wrote last year: "MJ Lenderman - Manning Fireworks.  A critic I like tweeted that this was his favorite album of the year, which surprised me enough to throw it into the queue.  The only reason I knew this dude's name is because he sings the harmonies on that supremely lovely Waxahatchie song.  But this disc is really odd to me because it sounds exactly like Ben Kweller to me.  Like, in one of the songs, I literally pulled up Spotify to make sure that the algorithm hadn't shifted me over to Kweller's tunes.  And I like Ben Kweller, so this is not a diss at all, I just find it really weird how similar they are.  "On My Knees" has a Neil Young/Crazy Horse vibe to the guitars.  Do we think this album title is about Arch Manning running for a 60+ yard touchdown for the Longhorns last weekend?  Or is it more like when you are the one shooting off the fireworks you can be described as manning those fireworks?  I could probably research but instead will just say that we can never know.  "She's Leaving You" is the top track as of now, and surprisingly is just to 2.5 [6.8 now] million streams.  My Twitter-verse made me think this was the hit album of the year for sure.

Freaking great song.  Also, that video made me want to cry for some reason.  "Wristwatch" [7.4 million streams] is a good jam too.  This is a very good album that I will keep around."

It really is excellent.  Straddles a great line between indie rock and alt-country that is located right inside of my wheelhouse.  

I mentioned the Waxahatchee song, and I want to go back to that as well as some other projects he has worked on.  He played the drums on albums for Indigo De Souza, and then joined with Wednesday for a bit.  I don't know Wednesday at all, but maybe that is a band I would dig.  His song with Waxahatchee though, is a wonder to me.  

Damn, man.  Not even joking that when the banjo got started my eyes started to well up.  I fucking love that song so much.  "Been yours for so long, come right back to it, I let my mind run wild, don’t know why I do it, but you just settle in, like a song with no end, if I can keep up,

we’ll get right back to it."  Harmonies for days and a lovely sentiment.  I know its not really his song, but just lemme have this as I dry my eyes.

Priority viewing for me.