Fresh Tunes Friday: MJ Lenderman’s ‘Manning Fireworks’

Article Photo by Karly Hartzman. Words by Casey Carlson

The closing song of MJ Lenderman’s Manning Fireworks might catch you by surprise if you’re scanning the tracklist and not clued into the humor of MJ Lenderman. Bark At The Moon is not a cover of Ozzy Osborn’s song – but rather – an original song by Lenderman about losing his sense of direction in life while completing the career mode in Guitar Hero by playing its final track, Bark At The Moon. Sorry if you were expecting him to shred it out like Jake E. Lee does on the track from 1983, but, this is an Indie rock album after all. And, not surprisingly, Lenderman’s Bark At The Moon is still a good song that crashes into a seven minute long shoegaze drone that gently sets you down to close the album.

At first glance, Lenderman’s characters in his songs, and perhaps his entire persona, feels like it’s been stolen from a meme: a mid-20s guy whose greatest achievement might just be the pile of pizza boxes and Miller Lite cans slowly covering his bedroom floor, but who somehow has excellent guitar skills – both in real life and in Guitar Hero. It’s enough to make one question the talk among the indie-rock crowd who seem to hail him as a modern-day Neil Young. But diving deeper into Manning Fireworks, the clearer it becomes—Lenderman might just be the unbothered Indie Rock guitar hero we forgot we needed.

For years, that crown was comfortably held by Mac DeMarco, whose warbly guitar records in the mid 2010’s drew slackers out in droves, making the combination of cigarettes and Carhartts cool for the first time outside of a construction zone. But with Mac’s recent dive into semi-retirement, dropping Five Easy Hot Dogs and then basically everything else he’s ever done before disappearing, his absence has left a slacker-rock gap that has needed filling, and MJ Lenderman has filled that hole with just enough twang to make it distinctly his own.

Though their styles differ (DeMarco’s stoned, lo-fi Cali coast vibes vs. Lenderman’s stereo fuzzy southern coast sound) there’s one constant: humor. But where Demarco favored absurdist tourettes-like whims, Lenderman opts for pop-culture nuggets, told with a wink and a smirk, even though it may not be how he really feels. His references, while precise and layered, are also absurd—they may fly right over your head unless you’re tuned into the same specific wavelength. He references lyrics from The Band, John Travolta’s head, Christopher Nolan’s Joker, and Lightning McQueen killing Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer during a bender in a Cars deleted scene…among others

Lenderman might as well have called this album New Songs for Losers, because if there’s one recurring character in his universe, it’s a fucking loser—someone always left on the outside looking in, even if it’s their own fault they’re even on the outside. On You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In, we meet one such character: isolated, alone, and jealous of the couples leaving the waterpark hand-in-hand. Some say distance grows the heart / But I know sometimes we just drift apart / Everybody’s walking in twos leaving Noah’s ark / It’s a Sunday at the water park. On this song, and most of the album itself, His delivery feels like he’s singing karaoke at the local dive bar while too focused on the screen — half-serious and half heartfelt.

The production mirrors this too. The pedal steel sounds as if someone’s playing it in the next room, gently plucking at it so as not to disturb anyone. It’s a subtle part of the album’s sound, but it adds a layer of melancholy that hangs in the background. Lenderman’s guitar solos, too, are short—deliberately so—but they’re never lacking. Each note feels considered, like he’s not out to prove anything, just adding what’s needed and nothing more. Yet all of this makes the album feel polished, and dare I say – even timeless. The exception to the album’s mostly laid back pace is Rudolph. The drums clip the track, guitars crash in full force, and suddenly you’re transported from quiet reflection to rockin chaos. It’s the kind of song that makes you want to slam a garage beer, crank the volume, and give your neighbors something to complain about.

There are three sides to every story: your side, my side, and Lenderman’s. And no one is lying. That’s the magic of Manning Fireworks. Lenderman’s songs are short – the entire album is just nine songs at slightly over a half hour – But in those brief, concentrated bursts of storytelling, you don’t just meet his characters—you cope with them. Coping, in fact, is the ties that bind this album together, even if you only get one side of the story.

She’s Leaving You, On the surface, it’s a relatively straightforward song about heartbreak, but Lenderman injects it with a lethal dose of boomer materialism. The character tries to delay the inevitable crash of a relationship by drowning himself in possessions, reaching for anything that will distract him from the sinking realization that she’s gone, and things are falling apart because of it. It’s the sound of a midlife crisis unfolding in real-time, summed up perfectly in Lenderman’s deadpan delivery: You can put your clothes back on, She’s leaving you /No time to apologize for the things you do / Go rent a Ferrari and sing the blues / Believe that Clapton was the second coming. It’s the perfect sketch of a soon-to-be-divorced dad, clinging to rock gods while spiraling into his existential breakdown all while saying “No, sweetheart, I’m fine. In fact, This is the best I’ve ever been!”

There’s a similar character on Wristwatch, a song that feels like talking to your grandpa as he proudly explains his Apple Watch to you as if it’s the greatest piece of technology he’s ever owned. Lenderman starts with his tongue-in-cheek comparisons: I got a beach home up in Buffalo / And a wristwatch that’s a compass and a cell phone—before flipping the narrative into something deeper, pulling the rug out from under you at the end of the song with a disarming metaphor about loneliness: …And a wristwatch that tells me I’m on my own. In that moment, you learn Lenderman’s humor in his songwriting isn’t just for laughs; it’s a Trojan horse for emotional turmoil. It’s a songwriting recipe popularized by Warren Zevon, served vegetarian and gluten free on this menu to meet today’s dietary needs.

That’s what makes Manning Fireworks so effective. Just when you’re settled into a song’s goofy, offbeat universe, Lenderman blindsides you with moments of incredible vulnerability. His magic trick is having one foot in the nostalgia of yesterday’s heroes, the other in the absurdity of today’s distractions, and both hands are on his guitar. Tragicomedic vignettes where every joke is a mask for something that’s just a little more broken in each verse.

In the end, Lenderman doesn’t figure out whether he’s the joker or the straight man – because he doesn’t have to. His brilliance lies in riding the line between the two, never quite letting on if the joke’s on him, or on you. And honestly, that’s what makes him so damn captivating. He’s not just throwing darts blindly on pop culture references just to mention it; he’s using it to talk about the absurdity of life’s craziness in a way that feels both familiar and completely unhinged. Maybe Manning Fireworks is one big in-joke we’re all a part of—or maybe, like the rest of us, Lenderman’s just trying to figure it all out – one Apple Watch metaphor at a time.