The black humour, slacker-toned vocals and coruscating guitar that light up MJ Lenderman’s new album of edgy indie country rock cannot hide the fact that this is a man wrestling with the loneliness of long nights too frequently spent in the embrace of a bottle. It was fun while it lasted, but here the reckoning begins. “Here comes the sun and the birds all scream/ It’s time to go to sleep/ Oh wherever you find me/ You’ll find me on my knees,” he sings on On My Knees.
This is Mark Jacob Lenderman’s fifth album under his own name. He is only 25 but has released four studio albums and a live set since 2019, when he self-released his eponymous debut, which he recorded in his hometown of Asheville, North Carolina. It was there that he hooked up, as Jake Lenderman, with the singer in the much-admired band Wednesday, before later hooking up with her in a more intimate capacity. They have since parted, though the shadows of broken romance hang over this album. “I took off on a bender/ You took off on a jet,” as he puts it on Bark at the Moon.
They also continue to play together; indeed, Hartzman contributes backing vocals to six of the nine tracks. But Manning Fireworks is really all about Lenderman and his ability to magic sweetness from sadness and solace from self-pity. He plays guitar, drums, bass, vox, organ and drone, augmented by a few guest slots, with production by Alex Farrar. The sense is of a musician increasingly sure of himself, growing beyond key southern Gothic influences, such as Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse, though he does borrow Linkous’s trick of variable volume for the banger She’s Leaving You. His status is also growing: he was enlisted for Waxahatchee’s latest album, Tigers Blood.
While the title track takes a well-deserved poke at Donald Trump, the other eight songs address more personal concerns, sometimes obliquely, but always with honesty and a rustic postpunk charm. Certainly, Manning Fireworks confirms Lenderman as the real deal, richly talented as a singer, songwriter and guitarist. His Dublin gigs in November promise something special.
