Foto-© Sam Resetarits

Wir sind noch recht frisch im MJ Lenderman-Game, erstmals fiel uns der aus North Carolina stammende Sänger, Songwriter und Musiker Anfang des Jahres als Feature-Gast auf Waxahatchees Single Right Back to It (unserem Lieblingssong vom aktuellen Album Tigers Blood der Songwriterin) auf. Am 6. September erschien dann MJ Lendermans neues Album Manning Fireworks. Aufgenommen in den Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville und coproduziert mit Alex Farrar, mit dem er häufig zusammenarbeitet, spielt Lenderman fast jedes Instrument auf dem Album und lässt Traurigkeit und Scham durch Gitarren erklingen, die an das Funkeln von R.E.M. und die Beharrlichkeit der Drive-By Truckers erinnern. Lenderman schreibt dort, wo die poetische Klarheit von William Carlos Williams und die Sparsamkeit von Raymond Carver auf die eindrucksvollen Bilder von Harry Crews treffen. Es gibt Gefühle von Selbstzweifeln und Weltüberdruss, aber die Zustände werden mit einer Klarheit und Sorgfalt wiedergegeben, die seine Songs wie Kurzfilme wirken lassen, da Lenderman einfach alltägliche Ängste und Schwärmereien auf unheimliche Weise wiedergibt.

Wir sprachen mit dem Songwriter via Zoom – unser Interview!

I really love the new record Manning Fireworks. Boat Songs was one of my favourite records of that year, and this is one of my most anticipated releases since the announcement. I’ll start with an open question by getting you to sort of set the scene a little bit for where you were mentally while making this record. What was different from when you were making Boat Songs? What new preoccupations did you have? Did you have a particular mindset or set of objectives going in, or did you approach it in a similar way to previous records?
I was trying to get it to feel like making other records for a long time, but I guess that’s just not really how it worked out because I was on tour a lot and I recorded it over a year, I think. 3 to 4 days at a time, whenever I was home. So I’d have to book out studio time way far in advance, even if I didn’t even have any songs written yet. That was kind of my struggle with it. Just finding time to write and hope that I had something by the time I got to the studio. I guess with Boat Songs, that was that was kind of written during lockdown. So I had all the time in the world. And once once things came back to being somewhat normal, I was kind of waiting until I’d have that much time again and then slowly started realising that’s just not how life works and it’s not going to happen again.

I think your lyrics have always been very self-reflexive, but Manning Fireworks has a new level in the sense that the songs are maybe a little bit more aware of your identity as an indie rock figure. On ‘Joker Lips’, you sing, “Please don’t laugh/Only half of what I said was a joke”. I read that as addressing your own sad comedic idiom. Are you uncomfortable with the way that you’re written and talked about in the public sphere, or am I reading too much into this?

There’s probably truth to that. It’s not really what I was thinking about but you’re not the first person to say that. Yeah, it was definitely weird, I definitely was starting to become aware of what type of things in my music people were picking up on, and what kind of persona that other people were building for me. That made me uncomfortable in some ways, but I think that’s just kind of normal once people start paying attention.

The problem with you saying don’t laugh is that one of the funniest parts of any MJ Lenderman song is the following lines where you sing, “Every Catholic knows he could have been Pope/Kalua shooter/DUI scooter”.


I think it maybe makes things funnier when you tell people not to laugh, like being in church or something. That’s when I feel like I laughed the hardest as a kid.


Another standout track with a great sense of humor is ‘Wristwatch’. I really responded to it on first listen, and then I’ve got more from each subsequent listen. In the song, the wristwatch is kind of a symbol of financial success and loneliness, which is a very simple idea, but you give it this kind of surreal slant by giving the wristwatch these absurd functions, like being a pocket knife or a megaphone. The humor really adds to the melancholy, because the narrator is clearly using this stuff to deflect from his loneliness. I’m really interested in your process for writing a song like this.


I was on the phone with a good friend of mine, and he kind of helped me out with that. And it started with the first line, which is a misquote from the song, ‘Come On, Feel the Noise’ by Quiet Riot. It’s like an 80s hair metal song. I always thought the line was, “So you say, I got a funny face/It makes me money”, but I just learned that wasn’t ever what the lyric was. So we used that, and then kind of just started building up this pathetic character who’s bragging about what he has. There’s no beaches in Buffalo. I guess I think a lot about that song, ‘Oceanfront Property’ by George Strait. That was kind of about an ex saying that he doesn’t love this person anymore, but it becomes clear he’s he’s telling all these other lies. So, yeah, and then I had that guitar part kind of just floating around for a while. It fit.


Is your own style of writing something that you just fell into naturally, or do you have specific writing influences? Do you have a North Star when it comes to your lyrical style? Are you thinking about writers or songwriters?

I mean, yeah, I’m thinking about a lot of songwriters that I really love, but I also want to not not come across like I’m trying to sound like somebody else, I guess. Usually the songs lately have has just stemmed kind of from one line at a time, just kind of following them and seeing where they go.

The album has this sense of shape to the sequencing, because you open with the title track, which is a waltz and not a traditional opener, really. Then about three quarters of the way through, we get ‘You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In’, which has this drum machine that reminds me of ‘You Are Every Girl To Me’, which happens around the same place on Boat Songs. And then, of course, you close with ‘Bark At The Moon’, which has this seven minute ambient drone outro. Do you think about the sequencing a lot and the pacing of the record?
I definitely think about the album all together once all the songs are recorded. I think that ‘Manning Fireworks’ was probably the last song I wrote, and I immediately knew I wanted it to be the first song. For some reason, it just felt like a good welcome in. And then it has an arc throughout the album. It gets rocking and then goes back down a little bit and then rocks out a little more. I try to think about just being a little bit dynamic. So, yeah, I definitely see see the album’s shape as kind of some sort of arc.
Is that why the new version of Knockin’ didn’t make it onto the record?
It just didn’t fit. I recorded it during the sessions for the album, and started realizing pretty early on it wasn’t gonna fit with the other songs lyrically or energetically. It just didn’t seem to have much of a place in the album.


Let’s speak a little bit more about the album’s outro. Do you listen to a lot of drone music? What made you want to make a song like that? What made you want to end the record with that? Personally, I love it. Was that quite spontaneous, or is it something that you knew you wanted to do?

I can’t really remember what was going on in my head. I think there were maybe four of us in the room, and I just wanted to do something that requires some patience, I guess. I also listen to a lot of music like that, especially before I was making the album, and it’s really fun to do live, too. It’s a nice interstitial kind of moment for going into another song, and we’ll never be able to recreate it the same way. So that’s fun too, just to give a moment during the set to zone out. I guess maybe it’s obvious why it’s the last song on the album. I almost made it the penultimate track, but decided against it.

Many of your friends from Wednesday and and the Wind play various parts, but you play virtually every instrument at some point on the record, and there isn’t a consistent lineup playing on every track. Are you quite particular about what you want during the production? Do you like the solitude of building it yourself, the process of building up songs over time?

Yeah, I do. I love having the control, and the live album wasn’t actually made until probably halfway through this record was being recorded, and I love playing drums, and I don’t really get to do it that much anymore, so that was one reason. When I did bring in some friends, having other brains there to give ideas is a really good. I just kind of always have made my records by myself.


How often do you go to the water park?

Oh, man, it’s been years. I don’t remember the last time. It was probably 15 years ago,



Have you ever finished ‘Through the Fire and the Flames’ on expert on Guitar Hero?


No. I don’t even think I can do it on hard.


What’s the best Guitar Hero song?


That’s a good question. I think the most fruitful for me was thee first time I heard ‘Spanish Castle Magic’, but ‘Bark at the Moon’. I played a lot of Guitar Hero, and then me and my best friend were like, maybe we should play real guitars. And that’s what happened.

MJ Lenderman live:
11.11.24 Berlin, Privatclub
12.11.24 Hamburg, Hafenklang