The day before Valentine’s Day, it had rained more than it had in nearly a year. The night’s drizzle gave the lights outside The Fonda Theatre in Hollywood shape and form. After lining up behind dozens of other southern indie rock enthusiasts, all in various types of workwear, I succumbed to my urge to conform to the vibe by buying a draft beer.
MJ Lenderman set the vibe with his recent album Manning Fireworks, a laid-back southern porch jam about trying and failing to be a good man. Written through the lens of a Gen Z guy trying to keep his screen time down, the album is a hot pot of American sports and pop culture references, lyrics that could be cult-viral tweets, and a nagging sense that the world might end before we even learn how to live.
The crowd filled in as Brooklyn’s Wild Pink opened up with their washed-out walls of sound, fitting the themes of the night with clever lyrics about disloyal pro baseball teams and a couple of pedal steel solos. Frontman John Ross grew up in Florida and wore a Florida State University hat, conjuring up memories of pitch-black late-night drives in Tallahassee.
The audience’s age ranged from the mid-20s “Zillennials” to Gen X indie old heads. Conversations in the pit involved the dissonance of “Manning Fireworks” critical acclaim online to its real-life impact, the new season of Apple TV’s “Severance” and what the “HimboDome” could be. That word of Lenderman’s creation, on the track “Wristwatch,” represents the kind of humor the artist has cultivated in his songs: online enough to know “himbo” but detached enough to make fun of himself for it.
Lenderman saddled onto the stage with a bottle of tequila in one hand and a light beer in the other.
“Birds against a heavy wind that wins in the end,” he started softly on the title track, an ode to the deadbeats that once seemed to have so much potential. This line, at once about feeling held back by the world and powerless against it, can also be read as a comment on the looming climate apocalypse.
Lenderman and his band are no strangers to climate disaster, as Hurricane Helene ripped through their hometown of Asheville, North Carolina, in September. Later in the performance, the band performed a new piece, “Pianos,” written in the aftermath of the destruction, to raise funds for victims of the storm. Leading into the weeping guitar jam, Lenderman expressed solidarity for the victims of January’s fires in Los Angeles. He wished he had something better to say, though, and in a sentiment similar to that of the show’s first line, he defeatedly remarked that despite our solidarity, disasters like those will likely just keep happening.
After breezing through the first two songs, Lenderman turned to drummer Colin Miller and tapped his wrist, signaling the anthem that topped many Songs of the Year lists and had the whole crowd singing along from the first line, “Wristwatch.” The crude phone video I got of the intro and first verse of the tune mostly captures the audience sing-along, the people overtaking the singer’s vocals. The band then drop-kicked into “SUV,” a rousing fuzz-rocker about mourning an unrealized relationship.
“I still have the key to your boyfriend’s SUV. I keep it by my bed like a picture of you and me,” Lenderman screams, inviting a mosh pit with a pathetic admission that is all too relatable for a crowd of twenty-somethings looking to sweat instead of crying about their failed romances.
“You could put your clothes back on, she’s leaving you/No time to apologize for the things you do,” he sings later on the lead single of the album, “She’s Leaving You,” consoling himself through the denial stage of a breakup. This sorriness is endearing to fans, acknowledging that being a guy with feelings, making mistakes, and hurting people is embarrassing and funny but also a part of regular life.
The lyrics accept their characters for who they are, even while they’re making fun of them.
Lenderman’s stage presence is akin to an older man who does not like the medicine he is taking. This only helps the performance, though, since whenever he casually taps through a soul-lifting guitar solo, you see his face and come back down to earth to realize this is just some guy. His mastery of the guitar solo makes every song new again as he and his band find novel ways to freshen up the songs they play every night. Tracks like “Rudolph” and “You are Every Girl to Me” are expanded upon, and the new melodies add meaning to the rotten nostalgia of their words.
Closer, “No Mercy,” a deep cut from an early EP, achieves its full potential live. Lenderman strolls over the frets on his guitar up to a musical peak before delivering a pushback down with the line, “I will show you no mercy. I will give you my pain.”
The encore summarized the night’s themes. The band covered Neil Young’s “Lotta Love,” with Lenderman jokingly claiming the world needs more love.
“Hangover Game” brought the crowd together to chant “I like drinking too” as if they were all bar buddies, and “Knockin’” chronicled the long, stumbling walk back home alone. MJ Lenderman repurposes Americana and tells tall tales about jerks to create a collage of regular southern life, displaying it for a few hours every night for the world to see before it’s gone.
