Communication with MJ Lenderman

There’s something cathartic about a room full of strangers singing the words, “You don’t know what shape I’m in.” It’s not that the crowd didn’t sing along with the majority every second song MJ Lenderman was playing at Montreal’s Fairmount Theatre, but these exact lyrics – “What else can you say to help / Broken-hearted friend / You don’t know what kind of shape I’m in” – were sung shortly after a hurricane destroyed Lenderman’s home . The home state of North Carolina, which seemed to reflect the precarious shape we’re all in.

Lenderman, 25, is currently on tour with his five-piece backup band (MJ Lenderman And The Wind) to promote his fifth album, Manning Fireworks. I was going to see this show in Toronto, but it sold out almost immediately. I think fewer people know Lenderman in Montreal, although there is something about him that fits better there. I saw him on the street a couple of hours before the show while he was having dinner with a friend – a tall guy with a small entourage, he was hard to miss, but he looked like any university student in town, with his T-shirt and shaggy curls. “This is him,” I said to my friend, who was not familiar with him or his music. I immediately felt stupid – Lenderman is so modest that just pointing him out somehow seemed intrusive.

“Why is he so shy?” I heard this kid ask his friends to add a couple of songs. And it’s true that Lenderman had little interaction with the public. In fact, he was the most reserved of the guys on stage, acting as the eye of the band’s storm. But Lenderman’s lo-fi vibe seemed appropriate – hunched over his guitar, eyes closed, almost invoking rather than shouting, he reminded me of ’90s indie frontmen like Kurt Cobain and Elliot Smith. Lenderman belongs to that category of musicians who give the impression that they are not enthusiastic about performing on stage. On the other hand, he was similar to the folk musicians of the 60s and 70s in that he had a relaxed demeanor on stage. Lenderman talked to his band during the show as if we weren’t there, as if they were just in some empty coffee shop or bar jamming to each other. At other times it felt like we were at one of those hippie festivals where everything is porous, with disparate bands playing together at the drop of a hat, spreading across the stage and off, famous musicians mingling with the crowd. Amanda Petrusich captures this strange time boundary that characterizes Lenderman and his music in her recent work. New Yorker profile: “Manning Fireworks might have been released in 1975, or 1994, or 2003, but that doesn’t mean it’s intentionally nostalgic; Lenderman simply creates warm, tart rock ‘n’ roll that hasn’t been felt since 1968, when Neil Young released his self-titled debut album.”

IN RingerEric Ducker described Lenderman’s sound as “a mix of ’90s indie shambles, ’70s driving rock, and pedal steel-guitar woozy classic country.” And there was it’s not surprising that he announced for the encore that he was going to cover the 1998 album Silver Jews. American water (“The Wild Kindness”), after he had already covered Smog’s “37 Push Ups” (from the 1993 album). Julius Caesar) during the performance. For the final encore, Lenderman brought his opener, Ryan Davis and the Roadhouse Band, back to the stage for a performance of “Werewolves of London,” Warren Zevon’s tongue-in-cheek 1978 track. Both bands took over the entire stage; Davis actually howled, and Lenderman retreated. Lenderman mentioned that he learned songwriting from Davis, “good-natured regular” journeyman musician with his own impressive body of work, and he happily shared the spotlight.

Like many older Lenderman fans (when I say older, I mean around 35), I found him through Waxahatchee, especially his work on “Right Back to It” (Tiger Blood2024). A minute later he enters the song, floating in the background (“Been yours for so long, come back to iiiiiiit”). The way Katie Crutchfield’s melody floats next to his mournful gravel satisfies a longing I didn’t even know I had. It’s so rare to hear a male voice supporting a female one, and yet, sitting back there, Lenderman amplifies the track somewhere above. Without his voice the song would be incomplete. It reminds me of those old folk tunes that sound great on their own, but are more impressive when paired together. “The Girl from the North Country” with Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash is one example that comes to mind: two guys mourning the loss of their one “true love,” but together.

From “Right Back to It,” I listened to other DIY stuff Lenderman had done before. Manning Fireworks (for which he deliberately went to the studio). I have to say that I prefer the earlier sound – it has a roughness to it that seems to suit it better. “Knockin” is my favorite, if you will. listen what I mean. Having seen Lenderman live, where his voice became part of the wall of sound, I missed that bedroom quality. The show, marketed as MJ Lenderman and The Wind, implying a separation made sense. It was this lonely vulnerability at his core that seemed to cause him to say, more than once, in shock, in response to rowdy audiences, “Damn, all of you.”

At the same time, at various points in the show there were long jams that seemed almost mystical. At first, during these extended instrumentals, I thought Lenderman might be losing an audience that already seemed to be in the dark over the Smog cover. But then something opened up in the unfamiliarity of that formless, all-encompassing sound that didn’t deliver the dopamine hit. My eyes stared at the ceiling, then closed, and gradually it began to feel like I was part of some kind of collective meditation that I never wanted to end. I’m pretty sure this is what caused the lights to come on two hours later – during the encore, Lenderman continued to sing “one more song” to the point that someone in the audience shouted back his own words: “We’ve heard this before! “The show seemed so epic.” He performed so many wonderful songs, but it was the atmosphere he created, almost holy communion, that was memorable.