The Singles Jukebox

Rounding out our readers’ picks is a choice from Joey that has Eric Clapton catching strays…

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Julian Axelrod: At this point, MJ Lenderman has been compared to every hyper-literate (male) songwriter and novelist under the sun. But at his best, he operates like a road-trained stand-up comic: Every town has a dive bar, every punchline has been sharpened until it draws blood, and every joke at his expense has already been made by him. Are you sick of indie guitar bros cosplaying as classic rock gods? MJ’s got a burn for the Eric Clapton stan in your life. Not into tales of Southern shitheads drowning in their own machismo? Here’s a tight five on why Vegas sucks. Worried this guy’s too irony-pilled for his own good? Enjoy this honest-to-god gorgeous shout-along chorus that would have ruled college radio if that still existed when Lenderman was born. The real kicker comes on the outro, where his ex-girlfriend/Wednesday bandmate Karly Hartzman croons the titular refrain like a drunken lullaby as our hero shreds into the void. Remember to tip your waitstaff.
[8]

Melody Esme: Yeah, I don’t get it. I didn’t really get Wednesday’s album either, but at least it had the masterpiece “Chosen to Deserve,” plus a lead singer with a mode beyond Guero-era Beck. All Lenderman has to offer is “Wristwatch”‘s “I’ve got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome,” one of the funniest and most compelling poetic visuals in 2024 pop music, and one that encouraged me to give Manning Fireworks more chances than I should have. And despite all the times I played it, I still had to refresh my memory on what this track even sounded like — a bad sign, considering it was the single. I like that he disses Clapton, though.
[4]

Taylor Alatorre: “You’ve opened the Bible to the very first page,” says Lenderman on the album’s title track. This is meant as a dig at fundie sanctimony, but it could double as a description of Manning Fireworks as a whole, and its tendency to reach for the nearest available reference point at all times, lyrically and musically. Guitar Hero, Cars 3, the first band that pops into your head when you read the term “alt-country,” it’s all there. This reads like a defect, but it isn’t necessarily. It’s called a comfort zone for a reason, and if the artist is able to credibly embody that sense of comfort and radiate it toward the listener, then all is well. “She’s Leaving You” is a standout example of this kind of productive complacency, even if its brand of good-guy realism makes Lenderman sound like Ben Kweller’s more successful roommate, who tells everyone he meets about how therapy changed him. Solid advice, though I’m still going with Sha Sha if given a choice.
[7]

Jonathan Bradley: I suppose 30-year-old David Berman pastiche isn’t too out of date when you’re making 50-year-old Eric Clapton disses. (Please, the midlife crises of 2025 are soundtracked by Nirvana. Maybe I’m being mean because my midlife crisis could also be soundtracked by Nirvana.)
[6]

Alfred Soto: I heard nothing special in this scenester’s voice at first: one more guitar-wielding wordsmith for whom the whine is wine. The crunch compensated for the occasional howlers. But as the morning after Election Day dawned, “It falls apart/we all got work to do” sounded prophetic. Even guitar-wielding wordsmiths must have soul.
[7]

Grace Robins-Somerville: I wasn’t as crazy about this song as everyone else was when it first dropped, but it’s grown on me and it really does feel like a classic. I wanna put it on the jukebox at a shitty dive bar and I want an entire room full of alcoholic middle aged men singing along as they drink what should be their child support payments. 
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Nortey Dowuona: My love of music, my hairline or my willingness to commit to self improvement? I gotta pick a metaphor, man!
[10]

Will Adams: Last year I fell into a hole of watching the show Daria from start to finish, and then rewatching certain episodes that I particularly loved over and over again. I had seen some of it growing up, when I was probably too young to understand the humor, much less its worldview. Watching it now is illuminating; I see that nearly 30 years ago, there were also kids who surveyed the landscape and shrugged at their inability to fit in. “She’s Leaving You” sounds like something that could’ve played during one of the commercial bumpers (once filled with pop songs, now featuring stock music due to licensing shenanigans): angsty while disaffected, assertive while self-effacing. The chorus’ call of “we all got work to do” doubles as a sincere motivational mantra and a fortune cookie. MJ Lenderman’s weary delivery sells it and lets the guitar solo do the talking.
[8]

Ian Mathers: I mean, it is nice to hear the slack, vaguely folky/countrified (or maybe just post-Neil Young) indie rock of my youth coming back into style even if it was never particularly my thing. I found myslf resisting the density of praise around Lenderman pretty much because I remember when this stuff was a dime a dozen, but that just means I’m on the other side of the divide than I used to be. Overhyped or not, Lenderman’s not to blame, and this is just a pretty solid song.
[8]

Iain Mew: A song this plaintive and classicist puts a lot of emphasis onto the words. The man with a rented Ferrari worshipping Eric Clapton is such a hoary stereotype it’s of age for its own midlife crisis, and as a result those lines barely feel cutting at all. The song improves from there but never loses the sense of settling for the easiest of targets.
[4]

Claire Davidson: I don’t mind deadpan breakup songs, provided the affect is used with intent, like a narrator poking fun at the self-pity they would typically indulge. Yet MJ Lenderman’s delivery here doesn’t seem self-deprecating so much as half-asleep or stoned, to the point that an otherwise endearing mix of saturated guitars simply sounds out of place in matching his sedated approach. What’s worse is that Lenderman’s lack of vitality only further draws attention to his languid lyrics, which are fine enough in capturing his subject’s dejection, but curiously withholding in describing the titular woman’s departure. The only clue to her exit is, perhaps, the subject’s propensity to idolize Eric Clapton, a reference so on-the-nose in its implied arrogance that I can’t even commend the attempt at wit.
[5]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: MJ Lenderman’s appeal, such as it is, is in his status as a classic dumb guy bard — the absurdist ripsote to Zach Bryan’s post-ironic classic rock worship (for those keeping track, Father John Misty is the ironic take.) When he sings on “Hangover Game” that he bought fake Jordans that “weren’t even shoes” or when he says on “Wristwatch” that he’s “got a houseboat parked at the himbo dome” I do not know quite what he is talking about in a literal sense but I know what he means — a level of ridiculous, laughable debasement that we all have touched at one point in our lives or another, feeling like a cat who has managed to get stuck in a wall or atop a refrigerator. This is a fine position for an artist to occupy, but it’s also a tenuous one; you can only play the sad clown for so long. “She’s Leaving You” is where I run out of time for Lenderman’s schtick; he’s running the Neil Young with jokes playbook without the jokes, a shaggy set of riffs with a great absence at the center. 
[5]

Katherine St. Asaph: Today is my birthday, so naturally I’m thinking about the new year before me. Specifically: Is this the year I enter my dad-rock era?
[8]

Aaron Bergstrom: Every song on Manning Fireworks presents a protagonist more pitiful than the last, a collection of broken men staggering through life, sneakin’ backstage to hound the girls in the circus, passed out in their Lucky Charms and searching in vain for an eternal Himbo Dome of the soul. “She’s Leaving You,” the album’s literal and figurative centerpiece, is the only song that even gestures at finding any common ground with these cautionary tales, in the process creating a kind of shambolic anthem. Sure, you might not currently be in the midst of an especially unimaginative midlife crisis. You might not be so far gone that you’re talking yourself into the genius of, yikes, Eric Clapton. And yet, wherever you are, it’s always true that it falls apart, we’ve all got work to do. Who’s feeling lucky?
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