Asheville, North Carolina, native MJ Lenderman inhabits an important nexus of the Southern underground. The singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist is a graduate of the native house-show scene, and of an necessary bygone venue referred to as the Mothlight. He’s been releasing his personal music since 2017, and can be a guitarist within the country-soaked alternative-rock band Wednesday, lead by his accomplice Karly Hartzman.
Whereas nonetheless solely 23, Lenderman comes off extra like a timeworn indie veteran than an keen newcomer. When a sure music web site bestowed its coveted “Greatest New Music” designation on his newest album, Lenderman didn’t even acknowledge the protection on his social media. He’s too busy, it appears, creating his personal tackle a basic sound, and enthusing in regards to the artists he loves, from The Lifeless C and Les Rallizes Dénudés to Jason Molina and Drive-By Truckers. “All I needed to do was make songs that had been so long as doable, and as sluggish as doable, with as few chords as doable,” he says, referring to the latter.
But, with the superb Boat Songs, Lenderman clears his personal path, mixing sentimental and stirring everyman observations with guitar distortion, the outcomes principally three-minute bursts that directly embrace and skewer American life. Right here, Lenderman takes listeners to theme parks, grocery shops and Michael Jordan’s sneaker cope with Nike. However his work additionally crystallises life’s tender moments: the crushing loneliness after a tense automobile trip with a accomplice on “Six Flags”; the emotional hollowing that happens when childhood heroes die. “Your laundry seems so fairly/Tender threads hanging and enjoyable within the wind/You’ll really feel so significantly better/Once you put on these garments once more”, he sings with John Prine-style readability on “You Have Purchased Your self A Boat”, connecting the dots between generations of normal guys with guitars who remodel their on a regular basis observations into gratifying poetic morsels.
“TLC Cagematch”, threaded with silken metal guitar and feathers of Lenderman’s ultra-light Southern accent, opens on a wrestling match, then circles round to self-medicating as a method of survival. “It’s onerous to see you fall so flat/From so excessive up onerous down on the mat”, he sings with resolve, his rhythmic supply falling someplace between involved and weary. “Tastes Simply Like It Prices” is stuffed with the staccato guitar assaults of Neil Younger & Loopy Horse, and remembers Magnolia Electrical Co’s “The Darkish Don’t Cover It” with a leaner profile. Within the tune, he ties collectively two quick anecdotes to a spin on a well-known adage, the title and closing line a reminder that we get what we pay for. “Beneath Management” finds Lenderman’s character caught in a literal and metaphorical ditch, a downtrodden loner ripe for a tear-in-your-beer scorcher.
Lenderman is a product of the underground, however he doesn’t dwell in wilful obscurity. He’s of a distinctly regional, working-class realm the place boat possession is an advanced image of prosperity, and sport is the dominant thread within the social cloth. He pairs these exterior symbols with a definite inside depth, and his model of country-rock music, with its noisy, explosive bent, is compelling sufficient as a capsule of recent youth. Nevertheless it additionally alerts an necessary postmodern antidote to the ’90s tradition it typically references, when alternate teenagers and faculty indie heads had been pressured to decide on a lane for worry of being referred to as a poser.
With Lenderman, excessive and low, underground and mainstream, are bedfellows. It’s a refreshing and completely unpretentious perspective that alerts the arrival of a brand new entrant to the pantheon inhabited by the likes of Prine, Molina, Mark Linkous, Patterson Hood, Vic Chesnutt and others, those that sang proudly from and for his or her Center American corners. Lenderman is actually a scholar of this pack, however after 5 years of releasing unique music, he’s discovered his personal voice throughout the lineage.
