The past couple of years have been busy for Asheville, NC-based MJ Lenderman. In 2023, Wednesday, his primary band, released Rat Saw God, their most eclectic yet integrated sequence. He played an essential role on Waxahatchee’s impressive Tigers Blood, released earlier this year. He also assumed a guest slot on Horse Jumper of Love’s Disaster Trick. He now releases his fourth solo LP, Manning Fireworks. If his previous outing, 2023’s Boat Songs, tipped a hat to various alt-country prototypes – particularly Son Volt’s Trace, Jason Molina’s oeuvre, and Whiskeytown’s Stranger’s Almanac – his latest set dives even more faithfully and eulogistically into those same sources.
As a result, some listeners may feel torn. While Lenderman confidently embodies the templates he employs, it’s hard to ignore the sprawling shadows of his predecessors, particularly the vocal tones and timbres of Molina and Jay Farrar. The album aptly spotlights Lenderman’s stellar guitar work, which may ultimately be the defining characteristic of the project. Lyrically, he does a fine job of balancing the droll and succinctly poetic. All in all, Manning Fireworks is a commendable, at times even thrilling venture. Lenderman culls, vets, and claims as his own the rudiments of alt-country, putting his Gen Z touch on a heritage sound that is, once again, experiencing a resurgence.
The slow-paced title track familiarly collages strummy acoustics and a vintage/cacophonous fiddle part courtesy of Landon George. While Lenderman’s voice transmits world-weariness, his lyrics tilt toward quippy diarism (“You’ve been high on the hog / and the dogs seem to hate you”) and a sense of slacker sarcasm (“Once a perfect little baby who’s now a jerk”) that brings to mind recent Kurt Vile or Courtney Barnett as much as Farrar’s wistfulness and/or the fatalism of Molina. “She’s Leaving You”, too, is a downcast, slurry take, Lenderman’s voice dripping prerequisite fatigue.
On “Joker Lips”, perhaps the album’s centerpiece, Lenderman’s melody is hyper-catchy, his vocal recalling East Nashville-era Todd Snider. Guitar licks are elegant and engaging. “Wristwatch” is a tongue-in-cheek take on the vapidity of materialism and the scary side of technology; i.e., how it makes both self-loathing and other-loathing so much easier (“I’ve got a beach home up in Buffalo / … and a wristwatch that tells me you’re all alone”). “You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In” is a more upbeat track, Lenderman’s guitar spry, chorus-y, buoyant. Karly Hartzman, Lenderman’s Wednesday partner, offers supporting vocals, the two voices blending evocatively as Lenderman punctuates the spaces between lines with grin-inducing guitar flourishes.
“On My Knees” taps into a Crazy Horse/slowcore vibe, Lenderman’s distorted strums clanging and chugging along, his vocals emerging from pools of distortion. “Oh, wherever you find me / you’ll find me on my knees,” he sings, hitting on a mishmash of deflective cynicism and stoic disillusionment. The 10-minute closer, “Bark at the Moon” (a reference to the 1983 Ozzie Osbourne album), spotlights Lenderman’s knack a la Neil Young for constructing relatively simple solos that combine ideal progressions with irresistible tone, even as roughly six minutes of the track feature Lenderman and the band navigating a noise-inspired audial limbo, the kind of desultory interlude a band might undertake during a live performance, especially outside on a summer night.
Manning Fireworks highlights Lenderman as one of the primary new-gen carriers of the alt-country torch, alongside Waxahatchee, Hurray for the Riff Raff, and the folk-leaning Big Thief. That said, these latter acts more consistently distinguish themselves, certainly in terms of vocals and melodies, but also lyrically. While the mixes on Manning Fireworks are studiously crafted, Lenderman’s presence largely enrolling, and his guitar acumen undeniable, the set’s overall gestalt is naggingly emulative. Lenderman, as compelling as he can be, rarely transcends the influence of his forebears.
