By Max Cohen
God bless Jake Lenderman.
Since the release of Wednesday’s Twin Plagues, in 2021 he’s been in the enviable but tricky position of receiving constant critic praise for his lead guitar chops while defining himself as a standalone artist. The dovetailing growth for MJ Lenderman and Wednesday works because the venn diagram of their fans is a circle. They both pull from the same batch of Asheville musicians (his live band “The Wind” features Wednesday’s Xandy Chelmis, Ethan Baetchtold, and frontwoman Karly Hartzman) and lean hard on the funny/sad dichotomy. But the prevailing narrative is that Lenderman’s music is specifically male. Core topics from his 2022 breakout, Boat Songs, include Michael Jordan, the Miami Dolphins, WWE, and Jackass.
Now Lenderman’s tired of the whole “dudes rock” moniker. The rub is, nobody’s looking for him to grow up. They love his impassioned TV vignettes as is. Not to mention he’s dealing with a genre market shift—in the past few years indie rock has bloated with country and shoegaze influences making the core tenets of his sound more commonplace. If he rests on his laurels he risks becoming a stagnant hack, forever pigeonholed as an enlightened bro. But if he shifts too far he could lose the down-to-earth humor that sets him apart.
God bless Jake Lenderman for his miraculous needle threading. Manning Fireworks is an achievement, a miracle that is totally his own, bounds ahead of his past releases and somehow the only next step he could have taken. Not only does it make the rest of his discography feel obsolete, it cements him as a singular creative voice leading the curve.
A significant difference here is that Lenderman’s more willing to unplug. Where Boat Songs sometimes felt dark and thin, Manning Fireworks is always colorful and warm, richer from the strings (and bigger label recording budget). He opens with “Manning Fireworks,” a lurching funeral dirge played by a decrepit jamboree. Gently ushered in with a drum roll, it takes nearly two minutes for the first distorted guitar to enter the picture. And when it does it’s the least important thing happening—rusty fiddle flutters, a buoyant walking upright bass and a flash of a piano lick dance on the outskirts of the song. The B-side free association bummer, “Rip Torn,” is another acoustic stunner. Cornered by a violin that gnashes like embarrassing memories from a night of heavy drinking, he whimpers deeply alone, searching for some solace amidst the harshness.
Even when he returns to a more familiar sound, there’s a renewed airiness to each song. “You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In” (which is basically “You are Every Girl to Me’s” heartbroken sister song down to the 808) sways to a plucked bassline and swung fingerpicking. Between the verses of “Joker Lips” a shiny, full body strum chimes in and out, pushing through the drawling riff like late summer morning sun pouring past lazily hung blinds. When the vocals come back, as smooth and polished as his voice has ever been, an organ crawls up the melody line with him. Lenderman’s arrangements are beautifully cluttered, like the cozy eclectic living room of a close friend. But it’s never distracting, every lick and movement in service to adding texture.
Nestled in the mix, Karly Hartzman’s vocals are a surprise highlight. On a Wednesday song like “Formula One,” Lenderman’s dog-left-in-the-rain harmonies slip seamlessly behind Hartzman’s unique timbre. But it’s a stickier fit when the roles are reversed. Because his voice is clearly less impressive they often try to bury Hartzman, leaving just the high end of her range stabbing out, thin, sharp and unpleasant. She’s almost unrecognizable on this album, wider and more soulful than ever.
For all its tasteful polish, Manning Fireworks still rocks hard. In fact, “She’s Leaving You” is probably the best classic rock song of the decade, with a three word hook you can’t get tired of. “Wristwatch” serves easy listening twang in the verses and a spit bitter solo. When the band stops riffing around each other to slam a down beat in unison, it’s like a shotgun blast echoing over a long hill. The distorted drum refrain on “Rudolph” cracks like skull on concrete. The last time it happens, layered over brilliant feedback, might be the most brutal and perfect two seconds of the whole record.
Some of the guitar sounds Lenderman makes on this album walk a razor thin line between masterful gain wielding and tinnitus fodder. The obvious example is the indulgent, obnoxious six minutes of feedback that caps off “Bark at the Moon” (and the album). But his singular achievement is the warbling wah lead on “You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In.” Lead is almost a misnomer, the sound feels so much more involuntary than that. It emanates like oblong lava lamp bubbles, like the pained growl of a mountain lion in heat. And what better sound to fit the song’s aimless, violent core? “What else can you say / to help a friend with a broken heart?” he cries, a line given new depth following his real life break up with Miss Pretty herself.
Manning Fireworks points its camera at small, awful men like a gun. The songs are ostensibly all short stories and the people that populate them are braggadocious womanizers, violent, controlling, insincere cowards who love Clapton and hate themselves. They gamble and blow their money on useless status symbols, cheat on their wives, drink too much, put holes in hotel walls, and kill other men who make them feel smaller.
While the subjects of his songs have gotten sadder and more adult than the celebrity characters in his past work, the images and references he conjures feel like they’re for kids—Santa’s reindeer, Lightning McQueen, waterparks, wet dreams, guitar hero. The wristwatch/compass combo might as well be a cereal box toy (Lucky Charms also get a shout). It’s reminiscent of the Beach Boys’ “Child is the Father of the man” shtick, but Lenderman’s spin is how empty these symbols of youth become in the hands of those who age badly. Their innocence has curdled: “Once a perfect little baby / is now a jerk.”
When he embodies these bad guys, Lenderman is earnestly disgusted. But the stories are more than a righteous rebuke or cautionary tale. While you’re never rooting for any of the men in these songs, you also never lose sight of how terribly lonely they are. The relatively cheery “Joker Lips” half suggests that being in love, being needed by someone else, is the path to self actualization. Maybe the men on this album would be better off if they could find an honest relationship. They don’t deserve it now, but could they?
Lenderman’s still plagued by his catholic guilt. Sometimes it bleeds into the love/lust stuff; “I wouldn’t be in the seminary if I could be with you.” In the title track, the jerk who hounds girls at the circus goes out in public and opens his “bible to the very first page.” He’s using it as a prop to pick up chicks, but he is reading it. Maybe there’s a chance, however slim, that he learns something, that he could change. For all the talk of death and religious imagery, of pyres and floods and original sin, there’s something here about redemption, flashes of hope for a better path scattered across the album. You can help a friend through a hangover and a heartbreak, or you can get down on your knees and ask for forgiveness. Hell, the chorus of “She’s Leaving You” is “We’ve all got work to do.” Still he never goes so far as to hit you with an uplifting moral. The tension of the characters’ shittiness and their possibility to grow is what’s so compelling.
“Joker Lips” also holds the album’s entire thesis in a lyric that’s sure to show up all over the place; “Please don’t laugh, only half of what I said is a joke.” The plea falls on deaf ears, this album is so fucking funny. With his dry, spaced out delivery Lenderman can craft a tragic and hilarious vignette more efficiently than Hemmingway (“Draining cum from hotel showers”). There’s no way to do it justice so I’ll just give you the top five moments:
5. “I’ve got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome” – Instant indie twitter classic
4. “Kahlua Shooter / DUI scooter” – Unmatched word economy
3. “How many roads must a man walk down till he learns / he’s just a jerk who flirts with the clergy nurse till it burns?” – Maybe the best chlamydia wordplay of all time
2. “I guess I’ll call you Rip Torn / the way you got tore up” – HA! A murderously stupid opening line (honorable mention to the whole MIB/milkshake/smoothie second verse)
1. Just piping out the word “clarinet” to announce a clarinet solo. *Chefs kiss*
He’s smirking along, but it’s fitting he’d ask us not to laugh. Everything about this album—the acoustic layers, the grittier lyrics, the six painful minutes of ambient noise—desperately demands to be taken seriously. Jake Lenderman (God bless him) is adored in such a condescending way. So much of the praise he gets has this asterisk of *it’s dumb but I love it* or is delivered in a way that says “look how clever I am for seeing the genius in this stupid dude thing.” I know I’m guilty of it. This is a genuinely mature album, a brilliant, glowing evolution from an already smart guy. But it so transparently needs to be seen that way that it threatens to warp the whole meaning of the piece. Is it about shitty men and redemption? Or are the shitty men just a device he’s using to kill the “dudes rock” association forever?
Or a third option—could Jake be the shitty man he’s trying to get away from? In the album’s groovy closer, his girlfriend gets tired of his jokes and leaves him to head for New York. He teases her for losing interest, cooing out a cool “S.O.S.” before basking in the fact that he’d rather stay at home than experience new things. You leave him looking stubborn, rude, controlling, snarky and small minded. And yet you can’t stop moving to the most infectious rhythm of the whole record. Maybe the real tragic joke is that even when Lenderman literally calls for help all we can do is chuckle and bop along.
God bless Jake Lenderman for Manning Fireworks, and God bless him because he just might need it.
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