MJ Lenderman knows why we get fucked up. The Asheville, NC singer-songwriter has taken the indie world by storm this year with his scuzzy country rock anthems. In a sold-out show at the 9:30 Club on the night before Halloween, he wowed the assembled hipsters and indie boys of the DMV with a set loud and dextrous enough to restore your faith in guitar music.
MJ’s peculiar fame among band dudes and the Pitchfork-reading indie intelligentsia accumulated first gradually and then all at once this year. The songwriter, who also plays guitar in the noisy Asheville band Wednesday, began tinkering with a droning, impressionistic Southern rock sound with a series of EPs in 2018. These culminated with 2022’s Boat Songs, a short but sophisticated album that announced MJ Lenderman’s arrival as the burnout bard of a generation raised on their dads’ collections of Neil Young and Bob Dylan records. It was around this time that I was blown away by MJ’s opening set for Plains, the collaboration between Jess Williamson and Waxahatchie’s Katie Crutchfield, at the Howard Theatre in 2023. Since then, MJ has collaborated on Katie’s lead single “Right Back to It,” released a live album And The Wind, and garnered all sorts of accolades for this year’s excellent Manning Fireworks.
Stream Manning Fireworks by MJ Lenderman on Spotify:
If you occupy the same music journalism corners of the internet that I do, MJ Lenderman has become inescapable over the last few months. The MJ discourse has extended beyond reviews and think pieces to twitter memes that liken him to “Rupi Kaur for straight men.” Shortly after selling out the Oct. 30 date at the 9:30 Club, the band announced a new leg of the tour, which will return to DC in May; that second show sold out within days and prompted them to add a third night. For 9:30 Club last week, local musicians I know from the internet were wishing their followers a “happy MJ day to all those who celebrate.” Even Bob Boilen was going.
All of which is to say that the hype was immense. The minutes before the band took the stage were perhaps the most crowded I have ever seen at the 9:30 Club. Thankfully, from the opening song “Wristwatch,” MJ Lenderman and the Wind did not disappoint. The band marries MJ’s delicate observational songwriting and killer ear for catchy hooks with a droning wall-of-sound instrumental style which is best experienced in a live setting, blasted as loud as possible. The combination delivers moments of catharsis and intense, almost transcendental beauty.
MJ is a master of guitar tone and song structure who at his best channels the shambling glory of classic bands like Crazy Horse. His songs are filled out by an incredible band including Jon Samuels on guitar, Colin Miller on drums, Ethan Baechtold on bass, and Trevor Nikrant on keys. Xandy Chelmis stood out on pedal steel and fiddle, providing beautiful flourishes and droning textures that complemented the chunky power chords at the core of songs like “SUV” and “You Have Bought Yourself a Boat.”
Watch the official music video for “You Have Brought Yourself a Boat” by MJ Lenderman on YouTube:
MJ’s songs are inhabited by a cast of deadbeats, drunks, and burnouts. They drunk drive scooters, pass out over bowls of Lucky Charms, punch holes into hotel walls, and lounge under half-mast McDonald’s flags. They’re burdened by nightmares and wet dreams. In MJ Lenderman’s universe, Michael Jordan shows up to the big game hungover and a forlorn Dan Marino struggles to find his face on a box of cereal in a South Carolina supermarket. His songs offer empathy to these miserable characters despite their flaws. In the breakup anthem “She’s Leaving You,” MJ consoles the sad, half-naked dude at the center of the song: “It falls apart, we’ve all got work to do.” The chorus to another of his new songs plaintively tells the listener that “wherever you find me, you’ll find me on my knees.” It may be that part of MJ Lenderman’s appeal is his grungy, beer-drench model of masculinity which seems to suggest that failure is both inevitable and redeemable.
Watch the official music video for “She’s Leaving You” by MJ Lenderman on YouTube:
At the 9:30 Club, MJ delivered these stories with a deadpan style and a creaky voice that often seemed at odds with the technical mastery of the band on stage with him. While his shaggy-haired band liked to rock out on the chugging riffs of songs like “Joker Lips” and “Rudolph,” MJ himself remained cool and detached, with a minimum of banter or stage theatrics. There was a practiced cool in the way that his laconic stage presence belied the immense creative energy and musical talent put into the songs. Some of my favorite moments of the show were delivered on tender country waltzes like “TLC Cage Match,” “You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In,” and “Rip Torn.”
In fairly short order, MJ Lenderman and the Wind played through every track on this year’s Manning Fireworks culminating in the final track “Bark at the Moon.” That song ended with several swirling minutes of feedback in which the opener Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band joined with oboes, flutes, and a gong to build to a noisy crescendo. MJ then resolved that noisy interlude to conclude the set with “You Are Every Girl to Me” and the 2023 single “Knockin.” That song, which interpolates John Daly’s cover of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” had the whole crowd excitedly screaming “knock-knock-knockin” together.
After a wide-ranging set which lasted nearly two hours, the band returned for a short encore that included a rendition of “Dan Marino” dedicated to MJ’s sister and the Boat Songs highlight “Tastes Just Like It Costs.” This song saw MJ describing a fight outside of a hipster butcher shop while his band conjured a howling storm of righteous guitar riffs which even a broken amp could not suppress. MJ seemed to surf above the shrieking waves of the storm as he screamed “mmmmm honey, it tastes just like it costs.” The show then concluded with Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse band again coming out to do a cover of “Werewolves of London” which featured fun references to DC icons (Marion Berry, Ian Mackaye, Jawbox). It was an appropriately spooky ending to a show the night before Halloween.
With the Manning Fireworks tour, MJ Lenderman has established himself as one of the most exciting songwriters and guitarists of our generation. If you missed the show at the 9:30 Club last week, tickets are still available for their return in May. I’ll see you there.