Review Summary: In which MJ Lenderman is hospitalized for approaching perfection
Wednesday, whatever else you might say about them, were something new. The country-stained shoegaze sound was, if not quite a bolt out of the blue, at the very least a decent splash in a pretty placid pond. MJ Lenderman’s solo work doesn’t so much seek to be that as to give new voice to the moody slacker-rock of the 90s, the music of introspective cynics bedecked with tattered thrift-store sweaters and dog-eared Bukowski copies. As disaffected as anyone's been in the past 30 years, as raw and unvarnished as a splintered, beer-stained coffee table, Lenderman's eschewed Wednesday's hazy, roaring experiments for a more grounded, introspective sense.
Alright, frankly, this isn’t the flavor of Americana that typically tickles my fancy. All too usually in this style, the smell of mustache wax, bad beer and irony’s miserable disease are just the unpleasant funk laid atop an utmost sense of musical laziness. And, ok, MJ Lenderman is
kinda making that his thing here. But there’s an intangible rightness to all of it that few bands outside of the likes of Silver Jews were able to capture. And sure, the ghost of David Berman’s sedentary drawl and sardonic wit and wisdom are all over this thing, but Lenderman’s slacker vibe cut up with slide guitars and fuzz are stacked to the brim with lazy hooks and ambling energy enough to soundtrack many a lonely highway drive. Pair this with Lenderman’s often startlingly bright, occasionally brilliant lyrics, and it adds up quickly to something rather more than the sum of its parts.
At its absolute peak,
Manning Fireworks feels like it speaks directly to the soul of anyone who’s ever spent too many hours on an empty road, too many hours nursing a drink in the solitary hours of the night. It’s as well-worn a statement as anything perhaps could be, but to knock that fact as someone who goes out of his way to defend just those same well-worn qualities in more traditional Country would be a bit hypocritical. Lenderman plays the tropes, sure, but when those warm blasts of fuzz come swelling up underneath that lazy slide guitar, what else can you do but smile and roll right along with them?
If I don’t feel this hitting the status of its great forebears, that sure won’t keep them from being in the same conversation; hell, with
Manning Fireworks Lenderman may find himself shuffling his way into that pantheon. Completely unpretentious, a self-effacing observer of himself, all slacker tendencies belying an actual, deep talent and sense of craftsmanship, a simplicity that’s far from simplistic. The wheel goes unreinvented, but how you spin it often makes all the difference.
