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.

something about a progressive post-hardcore album

Over Opiated in a Forest of Whispering Speakers, the new album from Seven Nines and Tens, introduces vocals to the Vancouver band’s blend of progressive post-hardcore and shoegaze. The vocals debut on album opener “Popular Delusions” and sound like a softer version of an Alice in Chains-style harmony over thick, cotton-sonic waves of thunder.

“Throwing Rocks at Mediocrity” again rolls out a controlled, tapered vocal harmony, but this time over picked-out single notes that sheen over a stuttering beat. Then a dramatic guitar and bass figure diverts the song into a confident strut that sets your head nodding yes. The song slows, expands, explores until it finds enough room to explode in slow motion.

I wondered if the vocals were too consistently restrained. But, with a little time, “Throwing Rocks at Mediocrity” turns its attention outward, then upward, reaching cruising altitude after 3:35. The drum work rounding out the song’s finale not only sounds great, it feels great.

The album’s promotional copy notes that, when writing the record, Seven Nines and Tens performed live with bands like Alcest and Pinkish Black. I can hear those bands’ influences, and I hear the influences of bands including Tool, Alice in Chains, and Black Sabbath.

The fourth song, “Let's Enjoy the Aimless Days While We Can,” starts softly, “You’re everywhere and nothing. Don’t tell me we can’t pull this off. It’s a far cry from a factory life. Permanence of the firmament.” These fever-dream lyrics lead to a churning riff overdriven with fuzz, a tentative, plodding bass and drum fall in behind, and the song labors, barely able to lift its lids. Heavy reverb blurs the edges of the vocal, which struggles under the subsea tones of the guitars. The song is a sailing stone.

But “Edutainment” offers a dramatic lift. The rhythm section engages with a syncopated beat and challenging bass line—together, they complement the even, chanting vocal harmony. The verse returns with guitars added to the arrangement. Then the song transforms, and by Jove, at 3:15, the album hits a second high, lifted by the surrender in the lyrics and vocal, “It’s going to end just like it started.”

Over Opiated in a Forest of Whispering Speakers was released January 7 and is the third album from Seven Nines and Tens. For this release, the band signed to metal label Willowtip Records.