A pedal steel guitar is weeping in one corner of the stage, comforted by a keyboard countermelody coming from the opposite end. Centre stage is up-and-coming guitarist of the moment MJ Lenderman, a study in slackerish nonc muels freewheels by his side, flinging lots of hair around.
This modern-day, if sepia-tinted tableau of southern-inflected rock is instantly familiar in that it recalls umpteen country-rock acts, not least Athens, Georgia cult heroes the Drive-By Truckers. Lenderman’s guitar work and reedy, laconic delivery, meanwhile, can lay claim to several fathers (Will Oldham, Stephen Malkmus) but ultimately sits at the feet of Neil Young. On My Knees, from Lenderman’s most recent album, Manning Fireworks, is just one of many tracks that could be bagged as evidence.
While small artists everywhere are struggling – streaming poverty, the shuttering of entry-sized venues, Brexit regulations – Asheville, North Carolina’s Lenderman is defying this bear market by surging inexorably upwards. Manning Fireworks, released last September, has been enthusiastically taken up by his peer group, seduced by Lenderman’s crunchy guitar and offbeat aperçus, as well an older audience keen on his source materials; it’s likely to be placed high up on many end-of-year lists.
Most fans will have initially come across Lenderman as the guitarist in the Asheville band Wednesday, whose Rat Saw God album cut like a hot knife through indie rock butter last year. His own previous solo outing, Boat Songs, was a word-of-mouth buzz among the US cognoscenti the year before that. Add to all of this Lenderman’s contribution to Waxahatchee’s track Right Back to It earlier this year – and his surprise featured artist billing on Stephen Colbert’s late-night US TV chatshow – and you have a portrait of an artist who doesn’t really have a home right now because he is permanently working. He remains in Wednesday, having amicably split from its frontwoman, Karly Hartzman; Lenderman has just come off a US tour with them before starting this solo jaunt across Europe with his band the Wind. He’s also mooted to be involved in some newer Waxahatchee tunes.
The focus tonight, Manning Fireworks, is the 25-year-old’s fifth solo outing overall and packs in some of Lenderman’s prettiest, most fleshed-out songs yet. Wristwatch and She’s Leaving You are loose and amiable-sounding, their saturated guitars matched by easy-going filigree fills. The core offhandedness of Lenderman’s offering, though, camouflages some tight writing and a sharp pen.
Wristwatch skewers a handsome guy whose flashy possessions can’t fill the void of his loneliness. “I’ve got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome,” sings Lenderman, “and a wristwatch that’s a pocketknife and a megaphone.” The crowd supply shout-along backing vocals.
Boats as status symbols recur in his catalogue – witness the snarky, funky You Have Bought Yourself a Boat from Boat Songs. Elsewhere, the residue of childhood Catholicism and sports references trade off with images such as “McDonald’s flags at half mast”. His humour is bone dry. Lenderman wryly lists the advantages of a dog collar in Catholic Priest (“All expenses paid, the house would come furnished”). He raises an eyebrow at Michael Jordan’s infamous 1997 “flu game” with the Chicago Bulls on the pointedly titled Hangover Game.
The passage in tonight’s set that seals Lenderman’s reputation as laid-back musician who knows exactly what he’s doing, however, is a fervour of musical expansiveness and emotional rug-pulling.
At the end of On My Knees, someone holds a feedback-laden note. It leads into Manning Fireworks’s 10-minute closing workout, the warm, heartsore Bark at the Moon. That climaxes not in guitar fireworks, as you might expect from a band whose heroes see guitar solos as showboating endurance events, but a fog of searching atmospheres and drones. The crowd is rapt.
What emerges unexpectedly from that ether is the spare No Mercy, from 2019’s Lucky album, a vindictive outlier in Lenderman’s work, full of suppurating loneliness. “If we meet up in the next land, I will be your enemy,” he sings, “I will show you no mercy.” The threat is delivered as a gentle, rueful croon, undercutting much of its toxicity.
But Lenderman can increasingly paint a high-resolution portrait with mere gestures, testament to his growing skill. “Kahlua shooter, DUI scooter,” he offers, a snapshot of a morning after many nights before. His observations are increasingly tempered by fellow feeling and empathy. “I wanna see you need me,” he wails, forlorn, on Joker Lips. Those flawed protagonists are often just spiralling.
