Indie Rock’s Latest ‘Savior’ Isn’t There Yet
Near the end of his new album, Manning Fireworks, MJ Lenderman deadpans over a crunchy guitar riff, “Every day is a miracle / Not to mention a threat.” That could be a Zen koan about the human condition or just a tidy summary of how the sad-sack characters in his songs view the world. Either way, it’s a classic Lenderman-ism — witty and economical but tossed off and immediately followed by a bizarro twist (the “threat” in question has something to do with “Travolta’s bald head”). Across four studio albums, the 25-year-old indie-rocker has cultivated an image as the world’s highest-achieving slacker, a small-town guy whose passion for drinkin’ belies a sneaky perceptiveness and a wry, unexpectedly bleak sense of humor. (It’s funny to imagine Lightning McQueen “blacked out at full speed,” as Lenderman sings on “Rudolph,” until you consider the resultant carnage.)
For the uninitiated, Lenderman is a singer-songwriter out of Asheville, North Carolina, who’s both the lead guitarist in the band Wednesday and a solo act, recording fairly traditionalist alt rock with a country flair and oddball lyrics that blurs the line between goofy and profound. With a fresh perspective rooted in some beloved reference points, Lenderman has rapidly garnered both a rabid fan base and critical adoration. Two years after he broke out with the comparatively lo-fi Boat Songs, music journalists have identified Manning Fireworks as an opportunity to open the floodgates, deeming Lenderman everything from a generational talent to “the guitarist who could make indie rock big again.”
Regardless of whether all that’s true, there’s a funny disconnect in heaping such highbrow hosannas on a guy who sings about Lucky Charms and the imprint that Jack Nicholson’s ass leaves on his courtside seat. (Is the “short story of the year” really “Kahlúa shooter / DUI scooter,” as Jeremy D. Larson’s rave Pitchfork review contends? Maybe!) Lenderman wears his influences on his sleeve, and you’d be hard-pressed to find writing about him that doesn’t invoke some combination of David Berman, the Drive-by Truckers, or Neil Young (especially Neil Young). If write-ups like rock critic Steven Hyden’s breathless “four-part rave” are any indication, Manning Fireworks seems likely to vault Lenderman to a new echelon of the alt-rock food chain, warranting a look back on how exactly this chillest of dudes got here.
Lenderman’s upbringing maps cleanly onto his music, whether through hints at his lapsed Catholicism — shame is a recurring theme, as is literal priesthood — or just the extent to which he draws from country and southern rock. His years at the University of North Carolina turned him into a utility player, playing drums and singing in a punk band called Slugly while touring with acts like Indigo De Souza. Crucially, the singer Karly Hartzman talked him into joining Wednesday in 2020. Since then, both Wednesday and Lenderman’s solo career have taken off — the band’s 2023 album, Rat Saw God, in particular, was a critical darling and reached the Billboard album-sales charts — with each benefiting from the rise of the other. (Here’s where I’m obligated to mention that Hartzman and Lenderman also dated, though they recently split.) To frame Rat in Youngian terms, Lenderman’s backup vocals are akin to Nicolette Larson’s on Comes a Time, dipping in and out on songs like “Formula One” to counterbalance Hartzman (this, of course, in addition to his shredding).
Despite his rapid ascent, Lenderman still has a ways to go before he reaches the commercial popularity of alt-rock acts that were garnering “generational songwriter” praise a few years ahead of him. Although he made his solo-artist debut on the Billboard alternative charts earlier this year by singing backup on “Right Back to It,” the lead single off Waxahatchee’s album Tigers Blood, he has yet to scratch the surface as a solo act. But that could always change as Manning Fireworks expands his audience. To use a more imperfect metric, Lenderman has about 630,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, compared to 5.3 million for fellow alt-Americana act Big Thief and 10.8 million for Phoebe Bridgers (who signifies a more commercially dominant strain of indie rock). Meanwhile, his biggest song, “She’s Leaving You,” sits at a respectable-but-low-for-next-big-thing status of 1.5 million streams. (A better comparison point for Lenderman might be Waxahatchee, who draws about 750,000 monthly listeners and whom he is more sonically aligned with.)
The pissing contest of monthly Spotify streams feels like something a character in an MJ Lenderman song might boast about (much like owning a “beach home up in Buffalo”), but for his part, Lenderman himself claims he’s not particularly interested in getting any bigger. Of course, it may happen anyway, if he maintains his knack for writing poignant songs about dumb assholes who view themselves as victims of the world’s cruelty. You’ll inevitably feel something for the prototypical midlife-crisis guy in “She’s Leaving You”; ditto for the jerk in “Wristwatch” parking his houseboat at the “Himbo Dome.” (No, I don’t know what that means.) Indie-rock-savior status can wait — in the meantime, it’s more than enough that MJ Lenderman gave us that little werewolf howl on “Bark at the Moon.”
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