MJ Lenderman covers the third issue of the BrooklynVegan digital magazine. Read the entire issue (at no cost) here.
MJ Lenderman is very serious about being funny. He’s been in a playful mood throughout our entire conversation, revealing an endearing gap-toothed grin and a keen sense of dry wit as he fields questions about his unexpected rise and his masterful new album Manning Fireworks. It’s not until I ask him about the way he uses humor to fuel songs that often end up poignant or reflective that he sharpens his gaze and leans forward. “I think usually what is funny in a lot of cases, especially in the way that I use humor,” he says carefully, “it’s funny because it’s sad. Or vice versa. That duality kind of writes itself.”
Born Mark Jacob Lenderman and known to his friends as Jake, the 25-year-old singer/songwriter has spent the last two years juggling two of the fastest-rising indie bands at once–Wednesday, in which he plays guitar, and his own solo project, MJ Lenderman–not to mention playing as a sideperson for acts like Waxahatchee and Indigo de Souza. As we’re chatting over Zoom on one of the hottest days of August, he’s sitting on the partially-covered deck of his friend Adam’s house in Asheville, North Carolina, the former home of Drop of Sun Studios, where Lenderman recorded his breakthrough 2022 album Boat Songs. An outdoor ceiling fan spins above him, and his shaggy head of hair looks just a little damp with sweat. When I comment on how nice the place looks, he smiles and tilts his camera back to show off his friend’s sizable in-ground pool.
The last two years have been kind of a blur for Lenderman. He spent much of the COVID-induced, 18-month lockdown writing Boat Songs, around the same time that Wednesday were working on Twin Plagues, which they released on Orindal Records in August of ’21, just as the world began opening back up. Twin Plagues was a breakthrough, and Wednesday hit the road that fall to play to excited crowds in cities where hardly anyone had given a shit about them two years earlier. Lenderman’s own Boat Songs followed in April of ’22 and he promptly hit the road as well, with his backing band The Wind. In 2023, Wednesday released Rat Saw God, their first album for Dead Oceans and one of the most widely-acclaimed indie rock albums of the year, as Lenderman signed to ANTI- Records and both of their tour schedules continued to ramp up. Throughout it all, Lenderman had to find the time to write a new record.
Boat Songs won over fans and critics for its shaggy lo-fi charm, sense of humor, sports references, and a knack for timeless-sounding countrified indie rock that Lenderman inherited from heroes like Jason Molina, J Mascis, Neil Young, and the Drive-By Truckers. As his fourth solo album, Lenderman never anticipated that Boat Songs would become the breakthrough that it did, but it came at the right time in the right place to scratch the increasingly widespread itch for indie rock that embraces a love of country music. Both Lenderman and the similarly twangy Wednesday have found themselves at the center of a trend that also includes recent records by Waxahatchee, Big Thief, Angel Olsen, and Ratboys, the last of whom half-jokingly dubbed it “post-country” in an interview with Billboard, a term Lenderman greets with one of his delighted grins. “I prefer ‘post-country’ to ‘country-gaze,'” he says as an aside. “That’s cool.”
As for why the interest in this type of music has surged in recent years, “maybe there’s a little bit of a rebellion,” Lenderman surmises. “I feel like, growing up you’d ask people what kind of music they like and they’d say, ‘Oh, everything but country.’ And I think part of me feels like, ‘Well you’re ignoring a lot. That’s a really broad statement.'” After pausing, he adds, “But I don’t really know.”
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In related news, both MJ Lenderman and Waxahatchee are playing the ANTI- showcase at Americanafest on Thursday (9/19) and that’s streaming live on Veeps starting at 8:30 PM EDT.