In an MJ Lenderman track, the extraordinary is at all times elbowing its approach into the mundane. His 2022 breakthrough album, Boat Songs, thrived on these conditions. One minute somebody was clinically depressed on the Six Flags log flume, the subsequent they have been locked in a spat a couple of “dumb hat” outdoors a butcher store. “Being actually unhappy or upset whereas carrying a dressing up,” he advised Pitchfork final 12 months, “that’s humorous.” During the last couple of years—as he signed with Anti- and remained a guitarist and songwriter within the nice Southern indie rock band Wednesday, alongside his now ex-partner Karly Hartzman—Lenderman grew to become a cult folks hero for folks prepared to speak about their emotions if they might sofa it in a joke about Jackass.
I had initially clocked Manning Fireworks as extra of the identical, the place Lenderman depends on this one bizarre trick to put in writing honest however in the end unserious songs. I used to be flawed. Lenderman has honed his songwriting such that I’d nominate a couplet for brief story of the 12 months: “Kahlúa shooter/DUI scooter.” He’s received traces that’ll paint a silly grin in your face: “I might actually use your two cents, babe/I might actually use the change,” or, “Is it the quiet hiss of a midnight piss/Or a river turned to creek?” If his folk-rock forebears, like Neil Younger and Jason Molina, have been drawn to the mystics of the pure world, Lenderman is drawn to the mystics of the shitty residence, easy and unvarnished songs born of small screens in small rooms in small cities.
His writing type conjures the darkish, dry wit of Warren Zevon. The boys who populate Lenderman and Zevon’s songs are pure losers, divorcés, badgering or self-effacing romantics engaged on their last-ever heartbreak. Each artists additionally know tips on how to open a track with a zinger: “Effectively I can noticed a girl in two/However you received’t wanna look within the field when I’m by way of,” Zevon as soon as sang. It’s such a Lenderman line, particularly for those who think about him singing it at half the pace Zevon does. “Burdened by these moist goals/Of individuals having enjoyable,” opens Lenderman, staring into the center distance on the mid-tempo rocker “On My Knees.” That is, thoughts you, the second time he’s sung about cum on Manning Fireworks.
Actually, it’s unfair to say that Lenderman writes about cum and piss and cartoons and video video games. He does, however it’s the type and economic system wherein he renders them, as if he’s brushing them in gold leaf. “Rudolph” opens with this:
