Manning Fireworks

There has been a flood of positive press about MJ Lenderman the last couple of years. The buzz has only gotten louder since the release of his most recent album, Manning Fireworks. I got to see Lenderman perform Manning Fireworks, in full, on the day that it released in September. At the time, despite all the discussion, I was only familiar with Lenderman as the guitarist for the country-shoegaze outfit Wednesday. Lenderman’s popularity has been rapidly rising as a solo artist, though.

I admit that I wasn’t expecting too much since I’m not a huge fan of Americana. When Lenderman started to play, I was the guy standing there with his arms folded, needing to be convinced that this set was going to be worth my time and attention. For the first couple of songs, “Manning Fireworks” and “Joker Lips,” I remained mostly in that posture.

By track three, “Rudolph,” though, I was starting to realize that I was coming under the spell of the music. Perhaps it was a slanted enchantment, but despite the sense of familiarity (Jason Molina is an easy reference point), I found myself drawn to the songs.¹ In keeping with genre-based expectations, Lenderman comes across as an everyman, but the former alter boy’s references to Catholicism sprinkled throughout the album add a bit of spirituality to the mundane.

In an instance of everything old is new again, Spencer Kornhaber writes for the Atlantic about indie rock’s new golden boy (gift article).

These themes are modern—listen closely, and the album actually couldn’t have come out in 1975, 1994, or 2003—but the album’s sound is not. Lenderman is now making blast-at-a-barbecue Americana, bedecked in pedal steel and tragic-hero guitar solos. Some elements hit the ear as unexpected: doomy riffing in “Wristwatch,” drifting clarinet in “You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In,” the rumbling uplift of “On My Knees.” Yet fundamentally, the album feels unmoored, assembled through reference points. Although the music scans as the work of a full band, it makes sense that Lenderman played most of the instruments: This is one rock geek’s modest vision, unimpeded. Lenderman’s skills aren’t debatable, and when I watch videos of him performing with his heavy-lidded eyes and boyish smirk, I get why people are obsessed. But if this is the next great hope for indie rock, then indie rock is becoming a costume closet.

I am old enough to remember a college kid I met in his dorm room with a Royal Trux poster, listening to the Dave Matthew’s Band pronouncing indie rock dead. He insisted that it had run out of ideas. This was 1994. I think most of us can agree that some indie rock albums that have stood the test of time were released after the fateful year the genre met its demise.

For a more balanced and historical perpective on the Lenderman phenomenon than Kornhaber’s piece, checkout what Matt Mitchell wrote for Paste Magazine.

1. I met Molina once at a show and he was the nicest indie rocker I’ve ever come in contact with. ↩︎