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Of all the contemporary records I’ve listened to in the last year, none has kept me coming back like MJ Lenderman’s Manning Fireworks. It’s eminently quotable, sounds great wherever you are, and fully realized for what it is: a catchy, midtempo country rock album from a wildly talented young songwriter who’s tapped into a rich reservoir of doofuses.
The doofuses in particular have brought me a lot of joy on repeat listens. Lenderman’s characters suffer everyday indignities and often find themselves alienated by their poor decision making, whether they’re catching DUIs on those awful motorized scooters that litter walkable entertainment districts across America, or punching holes in hotel room walls.
If you’ve ever retreated from real-world heartbreak into the glowy comfort of late-night video games or bought scam merchandise because it had your sports hero’s name on it, a Lenderman song has probably already found its way to you. The 26-year-old North Carolinian has risen to upper-tier indie-rock fame in the last year mainly upon the strength of Manning Fireworks and an aggressive touring schedule.1 (The millennial/Gen Z alliance around Lenderman appears to be pretty strong, from scanning the crowd at Cain’s Friday night.) Musically, you’re getting a lot of reverb and pedal steel guitar, occasionally evoking the most poignant moments of Drive-By Truckers records and rock riffs from a crew schooled on every Neil Young bootleg ever recorded.
I saw Lenderman live at the Tower Theater in Oklahoma City in February, in addition to the Cain’s show. The onstage personnel had changed a bit and they moved the song furniture around some, but the biggest difference between the two shows was the superiority of the acoustics inside Cain’s, where the mix is nice and roomy, perfect for following the lyrics even if three different guitars are all cranked up and the singer’s voice sounds beat to hell. It did, not that that seemed to matter to Lenderman or anybody else in the room.
Revisiting my notes from the Oklahoma City show, I’d scribbled “somehow every song has an absolutely killer line in it.” Here are a few of my favorites:
once a perfect little baby, now he’s a jerk
don’t move to New York City babe it’s gonna change the way you dress
‘cause I know going on vacation brings the worst out of everyone