MJ Lenderman

The humour in MJ Lenderman’s songs can fool you at first. A line about sports, video games, bad decisions or some ordinary piece of American life can make me smile, but a few seconds later I often realise that the song is actually dealing with loneliness, disappointment or somebody trying very hard not to admit that things are going wrong. That combination is a big part of why I find him interesting. MJ Lenderman, born Mark Jacob Lenderman on February 4, 1999, in Asheville, North Carolina, writes indie rock and country-influenced guitar music that sounds loose and casual without being careless. His voice can crack, his guitars can scrape and distort, and his songs often seem almost conversational, yet there is much more control underneath than the relaxed surface suggests.

Lenderman grew up playing guitar and became part of the active Asheville music community while still young. His musical background is wider than the alt-country label sometimes attached to him suggests. He has spoken about discovering artists such as Songs: Ohia, Silver Jews, Pavement and Sonic Youth, while Neil Young and other guitar-driven American music were also part of the environment around him. Before his solo career attracted wider attention, he played drums with fellow Asheville artist Indigo De Souza, appearing on her early recordings, and he later became guitarist in Wednesday, the band led by Karly Hartzman. That experience matters when I listen to his solo work because he never sounds like a singer-songwriter who happens to have picked up an electric guitar. He thinks like a band musician, leaving space for noise, repetition and rough edges to become part of the song.

His self-titled debut appeared in 2019, followed by Ghost of Your Guitar Solo in 2021 on Dear Life Records. Those early recordings already contained the mixture that would define him: understated singing, distorted guitars, country colours and observations that can sound ridiculous and painfully accurate at the same time. The real turning point came with Boat Songs in 2022, again released by Dear Life. Lenderman recorded it for around a thousand dollars in a proper studio, and its reception moved him from a well-connected Asheville musician to somebody attracting serious attention far outside that local scene. The album eventually led to his signing with ANTI- Records, but what I like is that success did not suddenly make the music sound polished into submission.

From Boat Songs to a Wider Audience

Boat Songs is still the album I would recommend first to somebody who wants to understand why MJ Lenderman became such a talked-about artist. It has country-rock warmth, indie-rock distortion and an almost deliberately unhurried way of moving from one thought to the next. Songs can feel as though the musicians have simply started playing in a room and decided not to tidy up all the rough edges afterwards. I particularly enjoy the way pedal steel and distorted guitar can occupy the same space without either one sounding like decoration. Through good speakers or headphones, the attraction is not a huge artificial soundstage but the texture of the performance: guitar strings bite, amplifiers sound slightly unruly and Lenderman’s vocal stays human rather than being pushed unnaturally forward.

“Hangover Game” is a good example of how his writing works. It starts from the bizarre basketball story that Michael Jordan’s famous illness during the 1997 NBA Finals may really have involved a hangover, then turns the idea into something stranger and more personal than sports commentary. The music pushes ahead with the rough momentum of a bar band that happens to have a very sharp songwriter standing in front of it. I like that Lenderman does not over-deliver the joke. His almost detached vocal lets the listener decide where the funny part stops and where something more melancholy begins.

Another side of Boat Songs appears in “You Are Every Girl to Me.” The song shows that underneath the cultural references and deadpan lines, Lenderman can write very directly about attachment and vulnerability. His guitar playing is especially important here because he rarely treats a solo as a clean technical showcase. Notes bend, distortion swells and phrases sometimes seem to stumble forward before finding their destination. For me, that slightly unstable quality is more expressive than perfect execution would be. It makes the guitar sound connected to the emotional uncertainty in the songs.

Lenderman’s profile increased again through his work with Waxahatchee. Katie Crutchfield originally brought him into the sessions for her 2024 album Tigers Blood to play electric guitar and sing on “Right Back to It,” recorded at Sonic Ranch in Texas with producer Brad Cook. The collaboration worked so well that Lenderman stayed and contributed across the album. On “Right Back to It,” his supporting vocal does exactly what I want from a duet partner: he does not compete with Crutchfield but changes the emotional weight of the chorus simply by being there. The harmony has an easy, almost lived-in quality, and his guitar playing reinforces the song without filling every available space.

Manning Fireworks

If Boat Songs introduced Lenderman to a wider audience, Manning Fireworks showed me how much further he could take the same basic ingredients. Released by ANTI- Records on September 6, 2024, it was recorded at Drop of Sun Studios in Asheville during several short sessions and co-produced with Alex Farrar. Lenderman played nearly all the instruments himself, but the record does not feel like an isolated studio exercise. There are contributions from musicians within his Asheville circle, including Karly Hartzman, and the result still has the looseness of people reacting to one another rather than following a rigid arrangement.

“She’s Leaving You” is one of the songs I would use to explain Lenderman to somebody who has never heard him. On the surface, it is filled with funny details about a middle-aged man making a mess of his life, but Lenderman does not turn the character into a simple punchline. The humour gradually reveals embarrassment, denial and loneliness. Musically, the song has enough weight to become an anthem without losing the shabby character of the story. I like the contrast between the singable chorus and a protagonist who is clearly much less in control than he thinks he is.

“Wristwatch” goes even further into territory that Lenderman handles particularly well. The character boasts about possessions and status while becoming increasingly isolated, and the technology around him does nothing to make him less alone. The arrangement never needs to announce the sadness because Lenderman’s phrasing already tells us something is wrong. He often sings as though he has arrived half a beat later than a more conventional vocalist would, stretching words and allowing sentences to sag at the edges. That timing gives his songs their recognisable personality. I can understand why some listeners may initially hear his delivery as flat or deliberately sloppy, but repeated listening reveals how carefully it sits against the rhythm.

The closing “Bark at the Moon” shows another reason I value Manning Fireworks. After an album full of compact character studies and observations, the music eventually opens into an extended section of guitar noise. Lenderman has spoken openly about his love of Sonic Youth, and here that influence becomes easier to hear. Instead of using distortion as a dramatic effect for a few seconds, he lets the sound develop and spread. On a revealing system, there is pleasure in following the layers as individual guitar tones gradually become something closer to a mass of sound, but the moment still belongs to the song rather than becoming an audiophile demonstration.

His collaborative work has continued alongside the solo records. He remained involved with Wednesday in the studio even after stepping away from touring with the group, and in 2025 he joined Katie and Allison Crutchfield and producer Brad Cook for the self-titled album by Snocaps. All four musicians played multiple instruments on the record, with Lenderman also returning to drums. That flexibility tells me something important about him. He is not simply building a career around being the frontman called MJ Lenderman. He seems equally comfortable contributing a guitar part, sitting behind a drum kit or becoming one voice within somebody else’s song.

What I think Lenderman brings to contemporary American guitar music is not a completely new collection of sounds. I can hear the history behind him: Neil Young, Jason Molina, Pavement, Sonic Youth, country rock and decades of slightly battered indie records. What makes it his own is the way he uses those sounds to describe the very specific world around him, complete with sports figures, consumer junk, technology, failed relationships and people behaving badly. He can be funny without becoming a novelty songwriter and sad without asking me to admire how sad he is. That balance has helped make him an important figure in the current meeting point between indie rock, alternative country and Southern guitar music.

For a new listener, I would begin with Boat Songs and then move directly to Manning Fireworks. The first captures the moment his songwriting and guitar playing suddenly reached a much larger audience, while the second shows greater control without sanding away the roughness that made him interesting. His work with Wednesday, Waxahatchee and Snocaps then fills in the rest of the picture and shows how naturally he works inside other people’s music. MJ Lenderman is not the most technically perfect singer I could put through a high-end audio system, and I would not want him to be. What finally convinces me is the way his loose voice, battered guitar sound and exact eye for ordinary human weakness all serve the same thing: honesty without self-importance.

HiFi’ve, Ronald – Your EarFluencer