MJ Lenderman – Manning Fireworks
By Kate Trebra | Top Tracks: “Joker Lips,” “She’s Leaving You,” and “Rudolph”
Credits: Matthew Reed and Andrew James
MJ Lenderman, rocketed into the alt-country-rock scene with 2022’s Boat Songs, is a masterclass in storytelling. Ordinary struggles are painted with an easy, tongue-in-cheek narration that both pokes fun at and sympathizes with men who are down on their luck. Manning Fireworks, his newest album, is a documentation of American comforts and struggles, all so deeply human and lived in that you can’t help but relate it to personal experience.
Lenderman tells his stories casually like he’s passing along news he overheard at the supermarket earlier in the day. In “Manning Fireworks,” the opener of the album, he recounts how a man “once was a baby, and now a jerk,” over a strung-out fiddle and shaky steel guitar. The song isn’t showy, rather, Lenderman prefers to sing alongside his guitars and not overpower them.
“Joker Lips” and “Rudolph” are soundtracked by a slide guitar and a hint of cowbell. It’s here where Lenderman’s writing skills come to light, strikingly odd, yet a perfect fit for the album. Lightning McQueen runs over Rudolph in a DUI scare, a Catholic dreams of being the Pope, and a priest ditches the seminary to be with his one true love.
Turning a blind eye to personal faults, “Wristwatch” is an indignant comeback to a broken relationship. The narrator has a beach house in Buffalo, a boat parked at the ‘Himbodome,’ and a wristwatch that’s a cell phone, pocketknife, and compass all in one. A breakup is juxtaposed by a “half-mast McDonald’s flag” in “You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In,” something so deeply American, it almost seems laughable. At perhaps the album’s most vulnerable, Lenderman sets down the metaphors and leaves the listener to ponder broken hearts amongst a growing distance.
“We’ve all got work to do,” says Lenderman in “She’s Leaving You,” categorizing a gambling addict who is down on his luck as no different from anyone else. You can’t do anything to prevent the inevitable, he argues, so do what your heart desires. A crushed beer can, a cigarette half-ashed, and an endless highway drive through the Midwest all fit effortlessly in Lenderman’s guitar riffs. “Rip-Torn” sounds like a Songs: Ohia B-side, straight from the slacker-country catalog.
“Bark At The Moon” is a reimagined Ozzy Osborne song played on Guitar Hero. Trumping all the other songs in length, “Bark” stands at exactly ten minutes long. At around the three-minute and thirty-second mark, the light southern twang hits one last chord and evaporates, leaving seven minutes of droning guitar feedback as the album comes to a close. It seems that the men scattered around the album have packed up their things and left, aiming for redemption.
Manning Fireworks is about the comfort placed onto objects, deflections of men who don’t know what they’re doing with their lives, and living in the feeling of sitting on your porch on a humid summer night. A stunning reflection of southern life, Lenderman holds a mirror to the listener and asks for understanding and sympathy.
