There’s a weighty sadness that follows Jake Lenderman’s otherwise charming songs; under the chain brand references and deadpan punchlines lies the decaying heart of an innocent dirtbag. Songs like “Manning Fireworks,” the title track from his incredible 2024 album, peel away the layers that make up the dudes who occupy Lenderman’s plainspoken lyrics, until their desolation is the only thing that defines them. “Once a perfect little baby/ who’s now a jerk,” goes the refrain that Lenderman drags on to build up an image of a dangerous man incapable of maturity. The “Manning” of the title couldn’t be more clearly gendered, translating masculinity into a volatile verb. The entire album is made up of bad Catholics, big shots, and boring saps who conflate innocence with youth—all of whom are unwilling to let go of their childishness, hoping to avoid responsibility, and, more specifically, sympathy. The tragedy feels light under the veneer of these seemingly ironic songs, but there is little to laugh about in Lenderman’s insights. He’s not judgmental of masculinity. Instead he wraps his characters in lyrical conundrums in the vein of Jesus’ Son author Denis Johnson, where comedy and tragedy break into each other in waves and drift into complicated territory.
More than anything, Lenderman’s critical observations reveal the devastating insecurities that define men of the twenty-first century—the same guys who are holding legislation, healthcare, civil rights, and the environment hostage under the guise of conservatism and god. Of course, Lenderman isn’t early ‘60s Dylan; he’s not trying to make a grand political statement. Not to mention that his characters are microscopic compared to the corrupt power brokers in D.C. and Florida. Yet the stubbornness, self-importance, and antipathy rises from the same resentment that lies in the core of these types of men, straight white men mostly, who feel like they’ve been left behind in an admittedly problematic neoliberal country. While so many of them have resorted to anger and cruelty, Lenderman takes on the task of exposing them with uncanny honesty as losers. Losers, who unfortunately, need to be understood with a bit of sensitivity.
There were so many men in the MJ Lenderman crowd at The Fonda on Thursday. Dads, mostly. A lot of these were real dads, sipping beer and staring at their phones which had photos of their children as the wallpaper. At the same time, a lot of these “dads” weren’t dads at all, though they also enjoyed sipping on beer. These were men with corduroy ballcaps, chunky New Balances, and fuzzy mustaches who didn’t look a day over twenty-four. I was there alone, also sipping on a beer, on liminal but marginal ground—my partner is pregnant, so while I’m not a dad, I’m not not a dad either. Although I was dressed in boots and a hoodie, casual enough to blend into the crowd, I obviously stood out. Unlike all the other men at the venue that night, I am not white. It’s an incredibly isolating feeling, but I took some solace by telling myself that everyone is here to watch and hear a musician we admire. Part of me wants to hope that Lenderman is someone these men actively listen to and understand, not simply enjoy. The guys he sings about are laughable but not meant to be laughed at lightly. Perhaps everyone at the concert also reaps up the ironies of the songs, which are absurd because they are interrogative. At least this is what I told myself, because I so desperately want to distance myself from these men. Also because, obviously since I was there sharing the same space, I was these men in a big way.
The opener was Wild Pink, the brainchild of John Ross, a no frills outfit from New York City with roots in heartland rock. Their act, comparable to Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty, is defined by classic arrangements, hardened songwriting, and worn delivery. Ross, however, separates himself from his predecessors with oddball lyrics about sports and religion, to squeeze out unusually life-affirming metaphors. Wild Pink’s tour is a celebration of their 2024 album Dull the Horns, their fifth, back-to-basics effort after a series of eclectic and explorative records. The entire setlist was culled from this latest work, introduced by “Sprinter Brain” and finished off with “Disintegrate.” The final song featured a memorable saxophone solo by guitarist Mike Brenner, which was the cherry on top of the revisionist eighties rock and roll sound of the band. Every line out of John Ross was a groan. Every dad in the crowd was reminded of their dad.
MJ Lenderman and the Wind wasted no time in kicking off the Manning Fireworks tour. Set-up against a backdrop reminiscent of the greenness and luminescence of the record cover, along with an errant incense stick to distill the venue in a burnt funk, as if bottle rockets just went off nearby, the band started things off with the opener and title track from the latest album. With little banter, they went through the next few songs in succession: “Joker Lips,” “Rudolph,” and “Wristwatch.” Lenderman would play the entire album in order, though he took breaks in between to dust off his earlier work. His first callback was the fuzzy and punkish “Inappropriate” from 2021’s Ghost of Your Guitar Solo. Then emerged a few tracks from his breakthrough, Boat Songs, which mixed shoegaziness and alt-country in the style of Wednesday—a band where Lenderman is notably the lead guitarist. Its ethereal distortion is a contrast from his latest work, which streamlines the instrumentation to coat his lyrics in Americana motifs like slide guitar and the fiddle. Some of these older songs were “SUV,” “You Have Bought Yourself a Boat,” and “TLC Cage Match.” He pulled out a deep cut with “Basketball #2,” a B-side to the early single “Lucky.”
Then, before he dipped back into Manning Fireworks, Lenderman paid homage to his hometown Asheville with a new song called “Pianos.” It appears in the gargantuan anthology Cardinals at the Window, a 136-track album which features some of the biggest names in music like Waxahatchee, Sharon Van Etten, Jason Isbell, Indigo De Souza, Jeff Tweedy, Helado Negro, R.E.M., Angel Olson, and The War on Drugs. This record is a philanthropic project which donates all of its proceeds to support the people of Asheville, a city recently devastated by Hurricane Helene. Lenderman was sensitive to his presence, and immediately sympathized with the grieving city before him. “I know something like this recently happened in Los Angeles,” he said, “I don’t know what to say. This shit’s going to keep happening all the time. All I can offer is solidarity.” His comments solicited a painful laugh from the audience, a melancholy similar to the stuff of his songs. Lenderman’s observations are sharp, and tacitly critical of the power structures that shamelessly leave everyday, vulnerable people and communities to suffer.
MJ Lenderman and The Wind returned to Manning Fireworks with its lead single “She’s Leaving You.” It’s a wise track full of wisecracks. “It falls apart, we all got work to do,” Lenderman pipes; “It gets dark, we all got work to do.” The self-awareness he shows as a singer-songwriter to juxtapose reinvention with tumult gives his listeners a glimmer into the unsexy labor of self-improvement. He exposes the fragility of manhood—if men aren’t tending to healthy relationships and habits, then they are descending into the eruptive abyss of self-pity. Take “You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In,” for instance, which begins as a harmless break-up ditty and ends up in a busted suite. “Punching holes in the hotel room,” Lenderman sings, “Singing all you had to do was be nice.” The price of entitlement is steep, it can cost all the love in a man’s heart. So many of these songs are cautionary tales, fables that can burrow into a moral conscience. I looked around me and saw men with their cheeks full of beer, tears glazed over their eyes. It was heartwarming, and the concert suddenly felt less like a concert and more like a pilgrimage, where men go to wash themselves of their sins and feel a sense of renewal. That’s how I felt, at least, and I went to bed that night with an unforeseen ease. Then I looked at my phone the next morning, and witnessed more of the world crumble under the vile thumbs of men.
