Rhythms managed to catch-up with North Carolina singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist MJ Lenderman to chat about his Anti- Records studio debut “Manning Fireworks” which was released this week.
This is Lenderman’s fourth solo release and I started by commenting on the progression it is sonically from his earlier albums, “Yeah for sure… this record more than others, the arrangements for some songs, especially like “She’s Leaving You” the parts are more structured than they have been in the past. Like a lot of my other songs, outside of that main structure of chords and lyrics, there weren’t really many parts. I kind of thought about the songs as like: the song is a house, and every instrument is like in a room, and they they’re able to do whatever they want, but they have to stay in their room”.
The new record continues to bridge alt-country with 90s slacker rock, a phrase Lenderman seems to get branded with fairly regularly “My whole life I’ve been accused of not caring about anything, but I think it’s just because I talk kind of slow, but those reference points also resonate with me. You know, I love Pavement too”.
For such a singularly sounding record, I was surprised the album was recorded in multiple four-day stints during breaks from touring with his solo band The Wind and as guitarist for Wednesday. “One of the benefits of doing it this way, is that I had a lot of time in between sessions to listen back to what we’ve worked on, and tweak it in a way that made the record more cohesive”.
Lenderman is having a purple-patch right now having also served as lead guitarist on Waxahatchee‘s highly regarded Tigers Blood LP from earlier this year “I played drums for an artist called Indigo de Souza, who is also from Asheville, and we did a record with Brad (Cook – Tiger Blood Producer). And then a few years later, my band played South by Southwest, and Katie (Waxahatchee) was in the audience, and she was about to start demoing a record with Brad, and she invited me to come out to his house and the demo session went well, and so we did the full record”.
Melodic and witty “Manning Fireworks” is also earning comparisons to everyone from Jason Molina to Neil Young and Warren Zevon “I mean, it’s flattering, I think because I am influenced by those people, so, yeah, as long as it’s not like, you know, saying that what I’m doing is too derivative, I guess that wouldn’t be as positive. But people always want to have something to compare your music to.”
One of my favourite moments on “Manning Fireworks” is during ‘You Don’t Know the Shape I’m In’ when the lyrics reference a clarinet “playing its lonely duck walk” followed by a clarinet solo. Its very reminiscent of Warren Zevon’s ‘Desperados Under the Eaves’ where the radiator hum takes half a verse. Lenderman explains this was more good luck than careful planning “the clarinet was just a happy coincidence. I ran into Shane McCord, who played on the record, I think, the day before we recorded them, and he was carrying a case, and I was like, what’s in there? And he was like, it’s a clarinet. And asked him if he could come back tomorrow. And he sat and he just blew it away”.
Manning Fireworks is available now from Anti- Records.