a few words about MJ Lenderman

Noisy guitars, country influences vie on MJ Lenderman's new album.

The latest by MJ Lenderman sometimes sounds hard-luck; other times, hard-bitten. Both fates come in spades on Boat Songs.

“TLC Cage Match” opens with an acoustic guitar soon accompanied by a sympathetic slide guitar, and then comes a lucid Lenderman with his reedy and resigned vocal: “It’s hard to see you fall like that, though I know how much of it’s an act.” “SUV” imposes overdriven guitars and feedback on the bitterly steady beat, and the bad memories are seared in with the lyrics, “I still have the key to your boyfriend’s SUV / I keep it by my bed like a picture of you and me.”

Songs weave back and forth between the sounds of Modest Mouse and Drive-By Truckers.

MJ Lenderman lives in Asheville, North Carolina. His solo work—and his work with the band Wednesday—pulls between 1990s noisy shoegaze guitars and country rock. Boat Songs, released April 29, 2022, is less of a lo-fi production than the Wednesday releases, but the lyrics remain eagerly vulnerable, like on “Under Control” when Lenderman carefully changes chords on an electric guitar and sings, “I had it under control, and then it snow-balled and rolled and rolled and rolled / And I don’t have control anymore.” The reckoning ends with the verse, “I got my wheels in a ditch / There’s a word for this, for what used to scratch the itch / And then some day it quit / Ain’t that a bitch.”

His sense of humor streaks through the album, especially on “You Have Bought Yourself a Boat”—listen and hear the countrified funk of the earnest and absurd. And the album opens with “Hangover Game” and its lyrics that scoff at the myth of Michael Jordan suffering from flu or food poisoning during his epic “Flu Game” against the Utah Jazz in Game 5 of the 1997 NBA Finals: “Oh, he looked so sick / It was all over the news / But it wasn’t the pizza, and it wasn’t the flu / Yeah, I love drinking too / I love drinking too.”

Note: I had not heard of MJ Lenderman until Boat Songs. I am a fan.

(posts) Pinback's "Sediment"

(posts) "Nevermine" by Forth Wanderers

(posts) "Cowboy Dan," song (minus video) by Modest Mouse

Note: "And I want out desperately / Can't do it, not even if sober! / Can't get that engine turned over!"

(posts) Bon Iver's "29 #Strafford APTS"

Note: Every once in a while I hear a song that is so good I hate the person that wrote it.

(posts) Car Bomb's video for "Black Blood"

(posts) "Bruises" by Dusted

(posts) "Dilly" by Band of Horses

(posts) "Golden" by My Morning Jacket

My Morning Jacket
  -Golden

Watchin' a stretch of road, miles of light explode
Driftin' off a thing I'd never done before

Watchin' a crowd roll in, out go the lights it begins
A feelin' in my bones I never felt before

People always told me
that bars are dark and lonely
And talk is often cheap and filled with air

Sure sometimes they thrill me
but nothin' could ever chill me
Like the way they make the time just disappear

Feelin' you are here again, hot on my skin again
Feelin good, a thing I'd never known before

What does it mean to feel millions of dreams come real
A feelin' in my soul I'd never felt before

And you always told me
no matter how long it holds me
If it falls apart or makes us millionaires

You'll be right here forever
we'll go through this thing together
And on Heaven's golden shore we'll lay our heads


Note: from the "Late Show With David Letterman"

"Into the Atmosphere" by Dusted

(posts) King Krule's "Rock Bottom"

Kings Of Convenience, "I'd Rather Dance With You"

"Young Folks" by Peter Bjorn & John

If i told you things I did before,
told you how i used to be,
would you go along with someone like me?
If you knew my story word for word,
had all of my history,
would you go along with someone like me?


I did before and had my share;
it didn't lead nowhere.
I would go along with someone like you.
It doesn't matter what you did,
who you were hanging with.
We could stick around and see this night through.


And we don't care about the young folks
talkin' 'bout the young style
And we don't care about the old folks,
talkin' 'bout the old style, too.
And we don't care about their own faults;
talkin' 'bout our own style.
All we care 'bout is talking--
talking only me and you.


Usually, when things have gone this far,
people tend to disappear.

No one will surprise me unless you do.


I can tell there's something goin' on,
hours seems to disappear.

Everyone is leaving; I'm still with you.

It doesn't matter what we do,
where we are going, too.
We can stick around and see this night through.

And we don't care about the young folks,
talkin' 'bout the young style.
And we don't care about the old folks,
talkin' 'bout the old style, too.
And we don't care about their own faults;
talkin' 'bout our own style.
All we care 'bout is talking,
talking only me and you.


And we don't care about the young folks,
talkin' 'bout the young style.
And we don't care about the old folks,
talkin' 'bout the old style, too.
And we don't care about their own faults;
talkin' 'bout our own style.
All we care 'bout is talking,
talking only me and you--
talking only me and you.

Talking only me and you.
Talking only me and you.

"Comrade" by Volcano Choir

 

The New Girl sports her newness

This New York Magazine profile says a Zooey Deschanel is not an Apple product like we all thought. A Zooey Deschanel is actually a constant, expansive, and versatile market force carried out through a persona. And a Zooey Deschanel persona is a composite of associations--associations with sexuality, quirkiness (sometimes mistaken for "originality"), innocence, fun, and indie credibility with all its emphasis on authenticity and sincerity. People, especially those who fancy themselves hip and/or original, explore these conceptual areas for opportunities to escape consumer culture. But every attempt to step outside that culture just expands the Market's reach there (and beyond). A Zooey Deschanel is that reach manifest; her persona is singular in that it does not change whether on or off camera, thereby invoking a claim to authenticity and sincerity that empowers it to follow the hip and the original to new areas into which the market can flourish.


Notes:

The NYMagazine profile writer is aware and even seems vaguely complicit with the permanent marketing campaign of a Zooey Deschanel--until sticking this jab at the end using a Zooey Deschanel's own words:

Hearing the CD reminded me of how she had gotten very impassioned when I asked her if she and Gibbard bonded over music the first time they met. “I’m wary about this thing about being in the generation of social networking where people are like, ‘I am my musical taste,’” she said. “I am not just a collection of music. Or a collection of movies. I think that’s a thing that people romanticize: ‘Oh my God, she likes this band so she is a dream.’ I’ve definitely learned that you can easily get stars in your eyes. I’ll meet directors and they’ll be like, ‘I love Godard!’ And they love screwball comedies and they love all these things I love, and then it’s, like, ‘Wait a minute, that doesn’t mean they can make movies.’“ 

Just because somebody likes something doesn’t mean ... anything, really.”

Right there a Zooey Deschanel shoots down the sole reason she is appealing, and apes the very reaction that people have to her: A Zooey Deschanel is so cute because she likes Hello Kitty! A Zooey Deschanel is a composite of associations and likes that constantly advertises those likes, thereby associating a Zooey Deschanel with whatever associations the audience has with the objects being liked.

In a sense, none of this is unique to a Zooey Deschanel, but it is perhaps taken to a new level and with a new audience.

I first saw a Zooey Deschanel in an Apple product commercial, and I noticed the face design that says, "You are looking at me" (or, "I am a thing that is looked at").

Adult contemporary

Recently the New York Magazine article "Indie Grown-Ups: Are Wilco and Feist our adult contemporary music?" turned a critical eye on a few prominent indie rock artists, describing, for example, Feist's recent album as merely "gusty singsong melodies about finding clarity by the oceanside delivered over cozy acoustic arrangement". The author's larger point was this:

These acts, intentionally or not, have won; they’ve taken a lower-sales, lower-budget version of the type of trip Sting once took, from a post-punk upstart to an adult staple.

Later he indicts labels for having aided and abetted this trend, grooming innocuous sounds from the likes of Feist, Wilco, Radiohead, and Bon Iver to create a new generation's equivalent of adult contemporary.

Although written in response to a different New York Magazine article, The AV Club piece "What makes music boring?" reinterprets this critique by distilling and elaborating on the "cozy" quality described above, this time using the language of boredom:

In a sense, all music is boring. The same, however, can’t be said about “boring” music. “Boring” is its own genre. It is a code word that instantly conjures artists with clearly definable attributes. “Boring” music is slow to mid-tempo, mellow, melodic, pretty in a melancholy way, catchy, poppy, and rooted in traditional forms. It is popular (or popular-ish). It is tasteful, well-played, and meticulously produced. (Or it might sound like it was recorded in somebody’s bedroom under the influence of weed and Sega Genesis.) It is “easy to like”—or more specifically, “easy for white people to like” (“white people” being a sub-group of white people singled out by other white people). It is critically acclaimed (perhaps the most critically acclaimed music there is), and yet music critics relish taking “boring” musical artists down a peg more than any other kind of artist.

This critique to me seems easy to argue, which is to say I don't disagree. But it just isn't particularly insightful. Both articles essentially make this analogy:

• Adult Contemporary is to pop music genres as Feist is to indie music.

This analogy extends easily:

• Adult Contemporary is to pop music genres as Poison is to glam metal/hard rock.

It can even extend to other discussions:

• Adult Contemporary is to pop music genres as scones are to sweets.

And the articles aren't more controversial because they take on indie music--indie music has no exclusive claim to coolness. My comment on glam metal and scones means more. It took more imagination.